Chapter 17 — The Employee Who Almost Leaves
TAMSIN
Eighteen hornbeams died between Friday afternoon and Monday morning.
Maeve found them in the temporary holding yard behind St Anne’s. Their root balls had pulled from the pots, pale fibres crisp beneath the hessian. The remaining twenty-four plants showed leaf curl and dry tips.
Tamsin pressed a thumbnail into the bark of the worst one.
Brown.
The hornbeams belonged to the private knot-garden client, Tamsin’s second active commission.
They were scheduled for planting on Wednesday.
The nursery had delivered early after a cancellation, and Tamsin had negotiated free holding space at St Anne’s because Leith’s yard was full of rescue cuttings.
“Who watered on Saturday?” she asked.
Maeve held up the printed rota. “You.”
Tamsin opened the shared schedule on her phone. Saturday showed Maeve.
“I moved myself to Alder Street when the inspection chamber arrived.”
“At eleven forty Friday night.”
“The schedule updated.”
“The sheet in the van did not.”
“You have access to the shared version.”
“I was at the school bed all Friday, then off Saturday. You told me not to monitor work messages off the clock.”
Tamsin looked at the timestamp. Maeve was right.
Friday’s changes had begun with an Alder Street delivery moved forward by the civil contractor.
Tamsin reassigned herself to receive the inspection chamber, then saw that Maeve’s school-garden visit sat nearest St Anne’s.
She dragged Maeve’s name into the Saturday watering cell and assumed the shared sheet made the change visible.
She had also sent a text about the early hornbeam delivery, a voice message correcting pot placement and an email asking Maeve to confirm the knot-garden quantities.
Three channels, none containing the complete responsibility change.
When Maeve did not answer after her shift, Tamsin treated silence as acceptance because the edit appeared tidy on her own screen.
“The original rota was initialled,” Maeve said. “The new one wasn’t.”
Tamsin had created the initials rule for contamination control and ignored it when her own schedule became difficult.
“Who checked Sunday?” Tamsin asked.
“I did. After I saw your change on Sunday morning. By then the small root balls were gone.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
Maeve’s expression hardened. “To tell you the plants you assigned yourself were dry?”
Wind moved through the dead leaves with a papery sound. Tamsin counted losses again because counting was easier than answering.
“We can replace eighteen from the nursery,” she said. “The size may vary.”
“They can supply twelve at this grade. The other six come next spring.”
“Then we redistribute height through the hedge.”
“The client chose uniform pleaching.”
“Young plants will equalise.”
“That is what you want me to tell him?”
Tamsin stood. “No. I will tell him.”
Maeve folded the paper rota into quarters. “Good. Then you can tell him why.”
They spent the morning triaging the survivors.
Maeve soaked the viable root balls in shallow troughs while Tamsin reduced damaged growth.
Six plants recovered enough tension to keep.
Five required replacement despite green cambium because root death would show during spring growth. The final loss rose to twenty-three.
Replacement and expedited delivery cost two thousand one hundred pounds. Installation delay exposed Leith Groundworks to a client penalty if the site missed Friday.
Tamsin called the architect.
“I changed the watering rota after the paper copy was issued,” she said. “The Saturday check did not happen. Twenty-three hornbeams are not viable.”
He was silent long enough for her to hear pages turning.
“You assured me the early delivery was safe.”
“I was wrong.”
“Can you maintain the planting line?”
“Twelve matching replacements arrive Tuesday. Six lower-grade plants can be distributed through the less visible return. Five come from our existing viable stock if you accept a mixed first-year height.”
“I paid for uniformity.”
“Yes.”
“Then I expect uniformity.”
Tamsin looked at the remaining hedge. “The only uniform stock is available from a grower in Belgium at higher cost. I can book refrigerated overnight delivery with two drivers and keep Friday’s installation.”
“At whose cost?”
“Mine.”
He agreed.
The plants, refrigerated transport and night collection consumed the director draw Tamsin had postponed after the windbreak error, plus half the contingency on the knot-garden fee. She paid the deposit before ending the call.
Maeve watched the confirmation arrive. “You didn’t tell him I missed the update.”
“You did not miss it. I changed responsibility without confirming.”
“You also moved the daphne trays last week after I set the shade plan.”
“They were too wet.”
“Because you watered them after I had.”
Tamsin remembered the duplicated entry. She had seen surface dryness, watered and updated the record later.
Maeve continued. “You gave me contamination setup, then checked every bag before I opened it. You gave me the nursery map, then changed shelves after I left. Every time I decide something, you come behind me and make it yours.”
“Safety remains my responsibility.”
“Everything becomes safety when you want control.”
The sentence hit with enough accuracy that Tamsin’s first response was anger.
“You have been employed for five weeks,” she said. “I am carrying the professional liability.”
“Then carry all the work.”
Maeve took the studio key from her pocket and held it out.
Tamsin looked at the key. “Are you resigning?”
“I am not spending six months guessing whether my job exists after you go to bed.”
“We have two active sites and an overseas plant collection tonight.”
“That is not a reason for me to stay.”
The deadline came first; Maeve’s refusal could be dealt with later. Tamsin stopped with the next sentence already forming.
She did not take the key.
“Keep it until I make you a different offer,” she said.
Maeve lowered her hand but did not pocket the key.
Tamsin opened the responsibility board in the studio. It listed projects down one side and tasks across the top, most carrying her initials even when Maeve performed the work.
She erased her initials from nursery operations.
“You control intake, placement, watering, condition records and dispatch,” she said.
“You have a monthly replacement budget of eight hundred pounds and authority to reject early deliveries. I do not move or water nursery stock without asking you. Legal, contamination or immediate safety risk can stop work; it does not transfer your domain to me.”
Maeve examined the board. “Who decides what counts as immediate?”
“The person who sees it stops the risk. We discuss control after.”
“And if you dislike my plant placement?”
“I ask why. You decide.”
“That will hurt you.”
“Probably.”
Maeve put the key back in her pocket. “One month.”
“One month?”
“I stay one month and see whether you can leave the board alone.”
“All right.”
“You cannot revise it at eleven forty.”
“I can revise my own tasks.”
“Not mine.”
“Not yours.”
They rewrote the rota together. Maeve chose Kareem as backup waterer for weekends when Leith stock used the community yard and added paid callout time.
Tamsin moved client approvals and design liability to her own column.
Every transfer required the receiving person’s initials before it became active.
Maeve added a protected handover period at the beginning and end of each paid day. She also removed Tamsin from automatic nursery alerts, leaving only safety and loss thresholds: pest spread, irrigation failure, theft, or mortality above five percent.
“I should see supplier changes,” Tamsin said.
“After I make them inside budget.”
“What if a substitute changes the design?”
“Then it crosses into your domain and I ask. If it changes bench position, watering or delivery, it is mine.”
Tamsin wrote the distinction on the board. She wanted to add approval limits for plant height, pot volume and supplier distance. Instead, she asked Maeve which records the business actually needed.
“Cost, condition, destination and why I rejected anything,” Maeve said. “You do not need a diary of every pot I move.”
They agreed on those four fields. The shorter record would take less paid time and expose decisions clearly enough to review without recreating them.
At three, Maeve called the Belgian grower and changed the collection sequence so Tamsin could use a smaller refrigerated vehicle. The saving was one hundred and eighty pounds.
“Put it back into contingency,” Tamsin said.
“Nursery replacement budget,” Maeve replied.
Tamsin almost corrected her.
“Nursery replacement budget,” she agreed.
The two-driver courier reached Leith at five forty the next morning. Tamsin had slept six hours in the flat and arrived as the lorry turned into the yard. Maeve controlled intake. She rejected one plant with damaged bark, documented it and arranged a credit without asking.
On Wednesday, the replacement hedge went in on time. The Belgian plants were three centimetres shorter than the original grade, but Maeve distributed them along the return where the slope changed. The line read as continuous from the client’s terrace.
Installation used every available hour. Tamsin set the line and final levels while Maeve controlled root preparation, irrigation and the sequence in which plants left their wrapping.
When one labourer reached for the hose before Maeve’s first soak, Tamsin did not intervene.
Maeve stopped him, explained that dry root balls shed water around their edges and made him fill each planting hole in two stages.
The correction was different from Tamsin’s usual wording and produced the same sound result.
The architect inspected every stem.
“It will be uniform by summer?” he asked.
“With correct establishment care,” Tamsin said. “Maeve is responsible for the nursery and maintenance schedule. She will send you the first-month checks.”
Maeve’s gaze moved to her, then back to the client.
“Twice weekly for three weeks,” Maeve said. “Weekly after leaf fall, unless wind or frost changes the condition.”
The architect nodded.
Back at the studio, Tamsin recorded the ￡2,100 replacement against her own fee, not payroll or client cost. Maeve signed off the surviving stock and locked the yard.
Tamsin did not reopen the board after she left.