‘Don’t you ever eat your own creations?’ Bram asks the following morning when he comes in from the back room, carrying two cups of tea and places one on the counter in front of me.
Today’s selections are Millionaire’s shortbreads, sticky toffee pudding tarts, and lemon cakes that I’m currently adding lemon butter icing to, and Bram opens the display case and takes his usual pick for breakfast. I’m still decorating the last of the cakes and he pulls the stool up to the counter again and sits opposite me, using a spiral patterned serviette as a makeshift plate.
He’s wearing a shirt with colourful clocks printed all over it, and I can’t help noticing that he hasn’t shaved today, and the added stubble makes him look sexier than usual.
‘Yes,’ I lie. The truth is that I’ve been avoiding it, both scared of running out of stock and not wanting to break the illusion that they taste as good as they look. What if I try one and they really are dried-up pre-packaged supermarket stock that someone’s gone to town with butter icing on?
‘Go on, have cake for breakfast, live large,’ he says. ‘There’s a slim possibility that you might enjoy it. If cake for breakfast can’t improve even the darkest of days, there really is no hope.’
He looks so earnest as he sits there, and apart from a few finger swipes of the icing I’m putting on, I haven’t eaten anything else yet today. And I have been given a cup of tea, and it does feel a bit wrong to obstinately refuse the cake when it’s right next to me. ‘Fine.’
‘Never has anyone had to be persuaded to eat cake before. You are a strange and unusual phenomenon to mankind, Cleo Jordan.’
‘You can talk,’ I mutter as I take one of the lemon cakes I’m icing and take a bite. ‘Happy now?’
‘Ecstatic. So overjoyed that my hardened little soul may burst with delight.’ On the word ‘burst’, he pulls a hand out from nowhere and—
‘Don’t you dare!’
It’s too late. He throws a handful of glitter over both of us.
I make a noise of frustration. ‘What is wrong with you?’
‘A question that has puzzled many renowned scientists for decades, but no one has ever come up with an answer. They’ve eventually had to agree that I really am just a bit of a weirdo.’
‘You can say that again,’ I grumble.
‘Oh, thank you.’ He clears his throat. ‘I really am just a bit of a weirdo.’
He’s doing it deliberately now. He knows it’s winding me up. After what I said about glitter yesterday, he knew the one thing that would drive me mad was more glitter.
‘And you can relax, by the way.’ He swipes a finger through the glitter covering the counter and sucks it clean. ‘It’s edible glitter. So no one can complain about eating it.’
I make that noise of frustration again. Spending time with Bram seems to lead to nothing but noises of frustration. ‘That doesn’t mean I want it in my hair,’ I mutter, trying to shake my blonde locks out over the floor. ‘Or my tea! Bram!’
He peers into my cup and then his own. ‘You should serve that. Who wouldn’t want to drink sparkly tea? It screams Wonderland.’
‘Someone is certainly screaming something around here.’ I’m still trying to brush glitter off the shoulders of my dress. While I appreciate his forethought in making it edible glitter, even edible glitter should be used sparingly. Although the sparkly tea thing is not a bad idea. I could line each teacup with a pinch of glitter so it’s ready when people pour their tea in…
Bram ignores me trying to blow glitter off my cake before I plonk myself down on a stool and take another big, frustrated bite.
‘I’m going to need the recipe for these. They’re so good. You could make a fortune if you got the local supermarket to stock them.’
I choke on that big, frustrated bite. He suspects, I’m sure he does. The silence between us is punctuated only by my hacking breaths as I try to claw air back into my lungs. Maybe I should be honest with him. His body language is laidback and easy, like he’s inviting me to say something, and he seemed so open last night, like he’d be kind and understanding, and the guilt is weighing me down. Maybe if I told someone…
‘I’m sure,’ I mumble eventually. I can’t say anything. He’s got a direct line to the local council. There’s no way he’s not going to tell them something like this.
His eyes sink downwards and he looks disappointed, like he was expecting me to spill the beans, but he continues picking pieces off his now-glittery cake and poking them into his mouth.
‘So, Dora or Patra?’ The next time he looks up, he’s got a carefully schooled grin on his face, as though the previous few minutes didn’t happen.
‘What?’ I ask in confusion. If it’s not frustration with Bram then it’s almost always confusion.
‘What’s Cleo short for – Cleodora or Cleopatra?’
I stifle a laugh at the randomness of it. ‘Neither. It’s not a nickname, it’s just my name. Abraham.’
‘You know what they say about people who live in glass houses – they should put up curtains.’ He laughs. ‘Fair point, well made, Cleonardo.’
I try not to laugh, but once I start, I can’t stop. ‘Every conversation with you is like a trip to Wonderland where everyone talks in riddles and every encounter leaves you feeling turned-around and upside-down.’
‘Pleasure to be of service.’ He tips the stack of hats again, that indomitable grin back on his face, and we finish our tea in slightly less awkward silence.
‘So when are you going to start the sparkly tea thing – today or tomorrow?’
‘I’m not.’
He raises two dark eyebrows as high as they can possibly go. ‘Sparkly tea is a must for Wonderland. We both know it.’
I hold his gaze for a moment, intending to stick to my guns, but his eyes have a glint to them that makes it impossible to hang onto my resolve. ‘All right, as ideas go, it’s not the worst I’ve ever heard.’ I take a piece of chalk over to the chalkboard menu on the wall, and add an asterix and ‘with extra sparkle’ underneath the tea options, because edible glitter might not be to everyone’s tastes. ‘Happy now?’
‘You could just say, “Thank you for brightening up my day, Bram.” Contrariwise, I don’t exist solely to annoy you.’ He lifts his teacup and drains the last of his glittery tea, and I do the same without another word, because, to be fair, these past few days would have been a lot less successful if he hadn’t come along. Where would Wonderland be without a very, very Mad Hatter?
* * *
That morning is our first afternoon tea, ironically at 11 a.m., a birthday treat for three middle-aged sisters, and Bram entertains with card tricks while I make smoked salmon and cream cheese and egg and cress sandwiches and put them on a serving platter, and then load up one of my handmade cake stands with glittery scones, fairy cakes, and butterfly-shaped slices of lemon loaf cake that I’ve cut out with a cookie cutter, and serve it with pots of tea and a selection of mismatched dainty teacups. They requested the extra sparkle, so each teacup has a pinch of edible silver glitter inside.
After they leave, lunchtime brings a rush with it for the first time, and although it’s not busy-busy, there seem to be customers in for most of the day, and by the time I flip the open sign over to closed at five o’clock that evening, my feet are killing me and my back is protesting about not having had a sit down all day.
‘I guess word is spreading.’ Bram’s clearing tables as I walk back across the shop floor. I take a tray from him and carry it to the back room and start loading plates into a sink full of hot water, because Lilith never had anything as modern as a dishwasher.
‘I’ll do that in a minute.’ He comes out with another loaded tray. True to his word, he’s been wonderful at keeping on top of the washing up without a single complaint. I’ve never met anyone who enjoys washing up before, and yet he whistles to himself and breezes through it. ‘Right now, there are cakes in the display case that are going to end up in the bin if we don’t do our duty as responsible citizens to save landfill and scoff the lot. Tea?’
‘Bram, it’s…’ I glance at a clock. It’s after five and all I want to do is go home. Well, back to the caravan. You can’t really call a rustbox on my friend’s driveway a home, can you?
‘Always time for tea!’ he says brightly, a sentence that I hear at least three times a day, usually said at the moments when it really is not a good time for tea.
‘You’ve been on your feet all day. Go and choose what you want because I’m going to ransack that display case in a minute.’
‘You’ve been on your feet as long as I have.’
‘Ah, but I haven’t been up since the early hours baking a teashop full of delicious goodies.’
That guilt again. I didn’t plan this, but I certainly never planned on sharing a workplace with someone who would think I baked them myself. I thought hiding it from customers would be a breeze, but it’s harder to outright lie to someone who seems so utterly open. There’s something about Bram that’s unflinchingly straightforward, and my guilt is giving way to panic that I still haven’t magically become the baker I used to be. I still can’t remember my old family recipes. What if I never do? How much longer can I go on like this? Sooner or later, am I going to have to admit defeat?
I go through to the shop and sit down on the stool behind the counter, and lean over to take a fairy cake with added Cheshire Cat-style pink and purple sprinkles from the display case, and Bram comes out with two large mugs of tea and a plate. He puts a mug down by me and one on the opposite side of the counter, then opens the glass doors of the display case and proceeds to load his plate up with one of everything that’s left until there are six cakes on his plate.
‘Moderation?’
‘Nah. I could get hit by a froose tomorrow. You know that Bon Jovi song, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”? Well, I’ll eat cake in moderation when I’m dead. I quite like sleeping while I’m alive.’
It’s hard to imagine him ever being quiet enough to sleep. ‘What’s a froose?’
‘I dunno. Cross between a frog and a goose?’
I don’t intend to laugh, but sometimes I’m so bewildered by what he’s going to come out with next that laughter is the only response. ‘How is it possible that even you can’t make sense of the things that come out of your own mouth?’
‘All part of the fun.’ He drops onto the stool, lets out a long sigh, and his shoulders droop. ‘Ah, the holy grail of life. A cup of tea, a cake, and a nice sit down. Is there anything better?’
‘You’re looking very good for your apparent age of ninety-three. I thought it was illegal to utter a sentence like that unless you’re collecting your pension.’
He laughs. ‘Age is just a number. You are never too young to enjoy the simple things in life, nor too old to enjoy the fun things life has to offer. Even better with the good company of people who barely tolerate you. Cheers.’ He lifts his teacup and clinks it against mine.
I feel that shot of guilt again. It’s not that I barely tolerate him. He’s quite tolerable sometimes. And quite intolerable at other times. Unfortunately both of those times seem to coincide and he is both tolerable and intolerable at the same moment. The Schrödinger’s cat of human beings.
He blows on his tea to cool it and then takes a big bite of his Victoria sponge slice. ‘Tell me something,’ he says conversationally, with his mouth full. ‘Why do you put preservatives in these?’
‘I don’t…’ I say slowly. Are there preservatives in them? I’d never even thought about it.
‘I’m just wondering why you’d want to pump freshly baked cakes full of chemicals when they’re intended to be eaten on the same day and not, oh I don’t know, just as a wild example, sit in packages on shop shelves with a best-before date approximately three weeks from now.’ He fixes me with a pointed look and one dark eyebrow pings into an arch.
The cake I was eating turns to rock in my mouth. I don’t say anything because one wrong word is going to give my secret away, and I have a sinking feeling that he knows anyway. By sinking, I mean drowning.
‘The jam in this’ – he lifts the slice in his hand like he’s making a toast and then takes another bite. Apparently preservatives aren’t enough to deter him from cake – ‘is packed with artificial sweeteners, which jam has no need for, and these cakes have got enough additives in them that you could dig them up in three-thousand years’ time and they’d still be edible, like that honey they found in the Egyptian pyramids.’
‘You’re full of… something a lot less pleasant than three-thousand-year-old honey.’
‘I can also taste the E numbers…’ He clears his throat and pulls something from his pocket. A card to read from? No. It’s something that rustles, concealed in his palm.
‘There are no E numbers in the cakes.’ I speak over him as he rattles off the list of E numbers.
‘Oh, come on, Cleo.’ He sighs. ‘I know.’
‘Know what?’ I’m not falling into that trap and giving myself away. That’s a trick as old as time – bluffing about knowing something to fool someone into admitting something they weren’t ready to admit.
He places his palm down flat on the counter, the rustling thing underneath it, and pushes it towards me before lifting his hand off with a flourish. On the counter is a list of ingredients on a cut-out piece of plastic packaging. Familiar plastic packaging that I’ve been stripping off ‘my’ bakes every day.
‘While I appreciate your environmental conscience when it comes to recycling, when unwrapping supermarket-bought goods and trying to pass them off as your own, might I suggest that when you recycle the packaging, you put it in a recycling bin at home rather than out the back here where anyone else who also enjoys recycling may see it should they go to put something in said recycling bin?’
Oh, sweet mother of missing socks. I was so unprepared for sharing a workspace that I hadn’t even thought of that.
‘Who enjoys recycling?’ I go for deflection instead of admitting to anything. I’m trying to ignore my suddenly pounding heart. The whirlpool of panic has turned into a tidal wave. This is it. Now everyone is going to know I’m a fraud. Everyone is going to know that I took on a tearoom when I’ve forgotten how to bloody bake. Mr Hastings is going to—
‘Why shouldn’t household jobs be enjoyable?’ He sounds like his usual cheery self, but there’s a look of steel in his brown eyes that suggests he isn’t going to let this go. ‘If you can have the time of your life while hoovering, you can conquer the world.’
He laughs, looking like he’s expecting me to do the same, and then sighs when I don’t. ‘What I don’t get is why you’re trying so hard to hide it? You’re not doing anything wrong. I’m sure lots of cafés and tearooms do the same, even without the fancy decoration that you add. Why won’t you tell me? I know I’m a bit much sometimes, but what have I done to make you think I’m some kind of enemy?’
‘How long have you known?’ I say, instead of answering properly. The fact he knows he’s a bit much punches me in the chest because he sounds sad and resigned, like it’s something he’s been told many times before. He hasn’t really done anything – it’s me. I’ve become someone who only expects the worst these days.
‘Since the first day. The first bite – I’m a connoisseur of shop-bought bakes. I recognised it instantly. I didn’t say anything because I hoped that I wasn’t so offensive to you that you’d tell me. It was only today that I came across the packaging and thought it was time to lay my cards on the table, so to speak.’ He clicks his fingers and a playing card appears between them, and he holds it out to me. An Ace of Diamonds.
‘An ace up the sleeve – very clever.’ It was obviously stashed inside his jacket sleeve or somewhere. It didn’t just appear out of thin air, even though that’s what he was going for.
He sighs when I don’t take it, and then leans over to tuck it into the teapot display with the others. ‘I’m not your enemy. I’m a bit of an amateur baker myself, maybe I can help?’
I don’t intend to scoff quite so harshly, but I do it so violently that it hurts my throat, and he looks remarkably upset, and I feel guiltier again. ‘You have a direct line to the council, Bram. Like you’re not going to report back on me.’
His face falls and, for the first time since I met him, the Hatter’s mad grin is a thing of history. ‘Oh. That.’
‘I can’t let them find out about this. At the interview, I got these cakes from a bakery on the way, and I didn’t intend for them to think I’d made them, but that’s what they thought and I didn’t correct them. I’ve always wanted to run a tearoom and I’ve always wanted to do something to share my love of Alice, and this was my one chance. If they find out now, they’ll fire me instantly.’
‘Is that why you hate me so much? Because you think I’m going to report back to them?’
‘I don’t hate you.’ I feel a stone of dismay settle in my stomach again. I hate the fact I’ve been so wrapped up in prolonging this lie that I’ve made him think that. ‘How could anyone hate you, Bram? You’re…’
We keep running into this problem – sentences with too many possible endings, and almost none of them are going to go well. What is he? He’s talented. Quick-witted. Charismatic. Delightfully bonkers. He’s holding my gaze and I feel like he sees every option flicker past before I settle on redirecting the sentence. ‘You work here. You’ve worked here for years. You’re obviously thick as thieves with the council. Why wouldn’t you tell them that I’ve deliberately misled them?’
‘Because I’m not like that, maybe?’ He sighs when I don’t reply. ‘Cleo, this place is amazing. The last thing I’m going to do is try to undermine you. I phoned Mr Hastings because he’s—’ He sighs and shakes his head before continuing. ‘I’m an employee here, just like you.’
‘I wasn’t supposed to be an employee. This business was supposed to be my own.’
‘And it will be. But the council are fiercely protective of Ever After Street and they have to make sure every establishment betters the area as a whole. Do you know how many requests they get to rent premises here? Some of them are terrible. One of them was a Disney-themed sex toy shop! There were Dumbo-shaped… you-know-whats with the ears and the trunk.’ He makes a phallic shape with his hands. ‘I mean, fun in its own way, of course, each to their own, but certainly not suitable for a place where children come to believe in magic. We try to keep scarring for life to a minimum.’
‘The point is, Bram, that you know that. I do not know that. Marnie doesn’t know that. Mr Hastings is one of the most intimidating people I’ve ever met and you’ve got a direct line to interrupt meetings. By reporting me, you’d have a one-way ticket to getting on his good side.’
‘Ever After Street wouldn’t be the same if anyone who wanted to monetise this place was given free run. Everyone starts with a three-month trial unless they own their own shops, like Sadie in The Cinderella Shop, or rent from a private landlord like Marnie used to. I started on a three-month trial run at the carousel. I was constantly monitored to ensure I didn’t make any small children cry or take any wooden horses out for joyrides. We all have to go through it. I’m no different.’
No different. Here is a human who is different in every way.
‘Yes, Ever After Street is an amalgamation of different shops, but it has to work as a whole. It’s a business – it has to attract visitors and make money. Either way, that’s nothing to do with me and not something I’d be involved in. And if it was, I’d say The Wonderland Teapot is a perfect fit for Ever After Street, no matter where the cakes come from.’
‘And I’ve pretended to be a good baker when I’m clearly not any more. You’d certainly get brownie points for telling them that the brownies themselves come from a supermarket.’ I down the rest of my tea, ram the remaining fairy cake down my throat, and march through to the back. ‘Excuse me, I have work to do.’
The unit is piled high with dishes and they clatter and clink as I plunge my hands into the hot water and wash each dish with such force that I might as well be trying to scrub the pattern itself off.
This is exactly what I was dreading. He’s going to have a field day with this. He must think it’s hilarious. The woman who’s opened a homemade tearoom despite not being able to bake and not having a home. He’ll have a whale of a time telling his council buddies about that, won’t he? And then everyone will know. The other shopkeepers who I’ve grown to love and respect will know I can’t be trusted. Mr Hastings will sack me instantly. There’ll probably be some kind of mark on my CV for the rest of my life. I didn’t think things could get any worse than the last time I got close to fulfilling my tearoom dream, but this will beat it hands-down. The emotions of that day come rushing in all at once, and the thought that history is repeating itself makes tears well up, and the more frustrated I get with myself for getting emotional, the harder it is to push them down.
Bram appears in the doorway.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, just go away. You weren’t supposed to be here. I didn’t want you here. This wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t here.’
‘Oh, if you knew how many times I’ve heard that in my life.’ For just one second, something sad flickers across his face, lingering for long enough to intrigue me before he covers it with his Mad Hatter grin. ‘I’ll dry.’
He picks up a tea towel and comes over to the sink where he prises the very, very clean plate from my rigid fingers and wipes it up. I hear his sharp inhale when he catches sight of the tears I’m desperately trying to stifle, and I appreciate the fact that he doesn’t say anything. I’ve always been weak in the face of help with household tasks, so I carry on washing up, piling soapy plates and cutlery on the draining board for him to dry.
‘Cleo, you didn’t get this job because of the cakes. You got it because your idea was outstanding. It stood out by a town mile.’
I’m about to snap that he’s got that wrong when he whispers, ‘That’s like a country mile, but longer. The Wonderland Teapot blew all the other pitches out of the water. Don’t underestimate that.’
His voice is gentle and kind, and he sounds so genuine that it makes me feel even more choked up.
He’s quiet as we wash and dry. He’s never quiet. In the three days we’ve worked together, he’s shut up for approximately two and a half minutes collectively. If he’s not yakking to customers, then he’s singing out-of-tune songs with misheard lyrics or tapping his feet and clicking his fingers to a beat heard only in his own head, and it means a lot that he understands the need for silence right now.
When the washing and drying is finished and put away, he crosses the kitchen and jumps up to sit on the unit opposite me. He takes his hats off and stands them on the unit, then pushes a hand through his blue hair, scruffing it up, getting rid of the hat hair by making it look like he’s been pulled backwards and forwards through a hedge several times. His brown eyes find mine and his look is one of real concern that softens my heart towards him. ‘What’s the problem? Tell me, please? I can’t help if you don’t tell me. I’d like to think we’re kind of in this together?’ He sounds questioning and unsure, the complete opposite of bright and confident Hatter.
The idea of sharing this burden is a nice one. I can’t tell Marnie, she’s got her own business to run and her own mortgage to pay now she owns the shop, and she’s got Darcy. She’s helping me out enough with giving me somewhere to park my caravan, I can’t burden her with my issues too.
And he knows anyway. Trying to hide it has been unexpectedly exhausting.
He can tell I’m wavering. ‘Is it a time issue? Have you been so busy preparing the shop itself that you haven’t had time to cook anything? Because I get it. We’re open nine to five. And everyone knows that nine means much earlier than nine and five means much later than five. It’s a lot of pressure to work full-time and have a life outside of work, not that I’d know anything about lives outside of work, but to get a shop full of cakes baked, you’d be up most of the night, right?’
‘I… um…’ I twist my fingers together.
‘Is it a skill issue then?’ he asks, and I get the feeling that he can see through me as well as Alice could see through the Looking Glass.
‘I’m kind of…’ I swallow hard, trying to think of a way to put it, ‘…between kitchens at the moment.’
His head tilts to the side. ‘I say a lot of strange things, but I’ve never heard that one before. What does “between kitchens” mean?’
I intend to give a carefully constructed answer, but my mouth moves without my permission. ‘Last time I tried to bake something at home, I accidentally set the kitchen on fire and got myself evicted and now I’m living in a caravan on Marnie’s driveway and the kitchen consists of one tiny work surface and a gas hob that I’m scared to turn on in case it blows up.’
The sentence comes out so fast that it’s all squashed together and jumbled and it takes him a minute to untangle it. ‘You’re homeless?’
‘I’m not homeless. I have a caravan and an address. I have slightly too much money to claim a benefit but not enough to be able to afford rent, and I’m a terrible prospect for landlords. If I can make this a full-time sustainable job, then I’ll be able to rent another flat and get a handle on the baking thing, but I need to get through this three-month trial. If you would just, please, not tell anyone, and—’
‘Get a handle on it? Can you bake at all?’
‘Yes!’ I huff in annoyance, but mainly annoyance that my attempts to be nonchalant are so transparent. ‘All right, no, not… not recently. I used to be able to. A couple of years ago, my ex and I were going to go into business together with a teashop, but it didn’t work out, and between that and the grief, it’s like… I’ve forgotten how. Every time I get near a kitchen, I go blank. I used to throw ingredients in with abandon and somehow they’d work out. My nan always said I had a sixth sense about what flavours went well together, but… I stopped baking, and now, I follow recipes to the letter and they still go wrong. I thought The Wonderland Teapot would unlock whatever part of my soul has gone missing, and I really, really thought it had its own kitchen, but it doesn’t, and I don’t, and…’ I trail off as my voice breaks. I didn’t intend to tell anyone that, but saying it aloud for the first time makes it feel like a weight has gone from my shoulders, and I almost sag against the unit, feeling like I need to catch my breath.
‘What’s wrong with serving supermarket-bought cakes then? There’s no law against it. Hastings and Co. would never know. He’s got the taste buds of a jellyfish.’
‘Because it’s not honest, is it? It’s someone else’s work that I’m pretending is my own.’
‘I’m sure the factory machines will be mortally offended.’
I laugh and then sigh. ‘My mum and nan ran a tearoom together when I was little. It was magical in there… but then she left, when I was ten. My nan took over – both the tearoom and raising me – and I helped out as much as she’d let me. Everything was homemade. Uneven and messy. Rustic would be the polite way of putting it, but everything was made with love. She was like the whole town’s nan. Customers would come in and ask if she had any of a certain type of cake and if she didn’t, she’d tell them to come back in a couple of hours and nip out the back to whip up a batch. I wanted that. I thought there’d be a proper kitchen here and I’d have time and space to get things right, but…’ I throw my hands out to the sides, indicating the units all around me.
‘Plenty of space to prepare food, nowhere to actually cook it.’ He finishes the sentence for me.
‘Both her and my mum taught me everything they knew about baking. I always thought I’d take over their tearoom one day, but… my nan aged. I didn’t know until after she died that it had got too much for her and the shop was drowning in debt. There was no way out but to sell up, and then…’ I shake my head. I already told him too much last night. ‘Cut to now. I thought baking would come back instinctively. Like muscle memory. Second nature because owning a tearoom is in my DNA… but when I heard about Lilith and this place and went back to the kitchen in my flat… the resulting cake ended up being decorated by the foam out of a fireman’s hose.’
‘Never the ideal end to a bake.’
‘And every time since then, it’s just got worse. I don’t want to serve preservative-filled cakes that I’ve unwrapped and slapped some icing on. I want to be authentic. I can do it. I just need to—’
‘Don’t say get through this three-month trial again.’ He cuts me off. ‘That isn’t the answer. You need to concentrate on the here and now. Buying this stuff must cost a fortune. It’s counterproductive because you want money coming in but you’re spending more than you’re earning, and you’re clearly spending most of your days terrified and wound-up about someone finding out, and honestly, Cleo, people are going to find out.’
‘Because you’re going to tell them, of course you are.’
‘N—’
‘You’ve got something to hold over me now. Something you can have a good laugh about, tell all our colleagues so they’ll think less of me.’
He jumps down from the unit and his yellow boots hit the floor with a loud smack. ‘Why do you think I’m that kind of person?’
‘Because that’s what people do. They let you down. They let you come within touching distance of your wish and then rip the rug out from underneath you. They say one thing and then do something different.’
‘The wrong people. Selfish people. I’d like to think I’m not like that.’
‘What are you going to do then?’
‘I’d like to help.’
It’s… unexpected and I struggle to come up with a response. ‘And why would you do that when…’ I start off snappy, but I look up and meet his eyes across the room, kind, genuine, dark but with a sadness in them that catches me off-guard. ‘…when I’ve been nothing but horrible to you?’ I finish the question in a very different way than I intended to.
‘It’s okay, I deserve it,’ he says with a nonchalant shrug. ‘I’m a bit too weird for most people. If they don’t realise it straight away, they do soon enough.’
That gets to me. No one deserves people to be horrible to them. Sure, he’s a little bit out-there, but other than turn up unexpectedly, has he actually done anything to suggest he’s a terrible person? He’s known about the bakes since day one. He could’ve disgraced me publicly with his knowledge but he hasn’t, and in the face of his attentive eyes, I can’t remember what exactly I’m holding against him.
I swallow hard again, for a different reason this time. ‘No one ever said weirdness is a bad thing. Even the most sensible people have weird little souls inside, waiting to get out. I’ve always liked people who are a bit weird. They make me feel better for being a bit weird too.’
‘Well, I wear my weird little soul on my sleeve, and it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. And that’s fine, but I’m not going to change to make other people happy.’
His words have a sense of weariness about them, like this is a conclusion he’s come to after many years of soul-searching and has had to use as justification more than a few times. I try to think of what I know about him. He’s obviously brilliant with children and an incredible magician. He helped Marnie out with the book festival she threw last year by keeping the carousel running for festival attendees, long after it was meant to be closed. He obviously helped Lilith out when she used to run the tearoom too. The carousel is a hugely popular part of Ever After Street and I wouldn’t mind betting that’s a lot to do with him. Even with his normal dark hair, he’s got the upbeat type of personality that draws people to him.
Literally, it seems. I come back to my senses to realise I’ve drifted across the room towards him. I shake my head and take a step backwards so sharply that I catch my hip on the corner of the unit and make myself jump.
‘Use my kitchen.’
I almost laugh at the absurdity of it. ‘Oh yeah, right. Very funny.’
‘Oh, yeah, right,’ he repeats pointedly, putting an emphasis on the sentence to let me know he’s not joking. ‘I have a massive kitchen and I bake often so there’s a ton of ingredients in. I only live a short drive away. You’re more than welcome to come over after work. If you want help, I can help. If you don’t, I can stay out of the way. It’s no problem.’
‘I’m sure your girlfriend will love that.’
‘If you wanted to know my relationship status, you could have just asked.’
‘I don’t—’ I start, but he cuts me off before I can protest that it really wasn’t about that.
‘You’ll be pleased to know I’m single. Can you imagine anyone being daft enough to put up with me for long?’ He says it in his up-tempo Hatter voice, but there’s a waver in it and a hint of sadness behind his words. ‘I live alone. You’re more than welcome to use my kitchen as often as you need. And don’t worry, I have a fire extinguisher. Between the two of us, we’ll have a better chance of monitoring for all flame-related activity.’
‘Flame-related activity’ makes me burst out laughing and he grins that wide Hatter grin again. ‘So that’s a yes, then. Let me give you directions.’
He holds his hand out for my phone, and I get a little shiver when our fingers brush as I give it to him. I watch him typing something and wonder just how wrong I’ve got this man. Just like last night, when he took those hats off, I think he let me see a bit of who he is when he’s not playing a character. And it was someone quite different. Someone I actually quite like.