I’ve never been to the affluent part of Herefordshire before. It’s not far from Ever After Street and the surrounding villages, but as my old car clunks along the smooth road that’s not filled with potholes, I have a feeling that someone is about to pull me over and politely point out a ‘no peasants allowed’ sign. This is a seriously nice neighbourhood. Houses seem to have a minimum of eight bedrooms, pretty flowerbeds, neat lawns, and trimmed hedges. At least one motorhome parked outside massive double-garages. Some even have fountains in their driveways. Fountains, for goodness’ sake. Have I taken a wrong turn? Surely Bram doesn’t live somewhere like this? The trees are swathed in masses of white and pink spring blossom and neatly pruned into wine glass shapes. Who the heck worries about what shape a tree is in?
I pull over at the gate of a large house and double-check the instructions he put in my phone. The house in front of me is set so far back in the grounds that it looks quite small from this distance. This cannot be Bram’s house. It’s got to be a joke.
On one of the imposing gateposts, there’s a security camera with a screen, showing my car in the gateway and my face when I get out and peer at it, but while I’m still trying to figure out which button I need to press on the intercom, it buzzes and the iron gates slide open to let me in.
‘Thanks,’ I say to the screen and get back in the car and drive through, and they close automatically behind me.
It feels more like driving into a country park than a house. The gravel driveway is bordered by freshly cut grass on either side and there’s not a weed in sight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lawn without dandelions and buttercups popping up all over it. There are trees dotted around covered in fresh green leaves that have sprung open for spring and the ever-present fizz of blossom.
I’m driving painstakingly slowly, leaning forwards so I can see the mansion as it comes into view. Maybe it’s not exactly a mansion. There’s probably some rule about how many rooms a house has to have to qualify for mansion status, and this probably just misses out, but it’s a very nice house.
There’s the most beautiful magnolia tree I’ve ever seen in the middle of the courtyard, its branches are weighed down with two-tone magenta pink flowers and they extend over the neat gravel area where there’s a car parked.
Bram’s car? It’s completely out of place with this manor of a house – a dinged-up old blue thing that makes mine look modern when I stop next to it, parking underneath the branches of the magnolia tree, the scent of blossom strong in the air. Sandy-coloured gravel crunches under my feet as I grab my bag of ingredients and swing my legs out of the car, wishing I’d worn something a bit more formal than the jeans and oversized T-shirt I changed into after work.
There’s a bumper sticker on the back of the car that’s got a silhouette of the White Rabbit with his trumpet and the Alice in Wonderland quote – ‘Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’ Definitely Bram’s car then.
I’m admiring the stone planters of colour-coordinated pastel tulips when the front door opens to reveal… a totally different person.
‘Good lord, I really am in the wrong place,’ I say as I crunch across the gravel towards the steps leading up to the door. Because the man who has answered it is so far removed from the Mad Hatter that I genuinely do have to squint and discreetly double-check that it’s actually Bram and not a brother or cousin or something.
He’s wearing black jogging bottoms and nothing but white socks on his feet. A plain grey marl T-shirt, no hat in sight, and no eyeliner. He’s still got his earrings in, and instead of sticking out in a thousand directions and spiked with product, his blue hair is soft-looking and close to his head, the ends starting to turn wavy where it’s still drying after being washed.
‘’ello,’ he says in that high-pitched nasally voice that I’d recognise anywhere.
‘You look so different,’ I say in response, because it’s really thrown me. At work, I know Bram is playing a role, but I’d never considered what he might look like at other times. ‘You are full of surprises.’
‘Thought I was full of something a lot more unpleasant than three-thousand-year-old honey.’
‘Oh, you are.’ I reach the top of the steps and look up into his gentle dark eyes. ‘But you’ve got some surprises in there too.’
He smiles, a soft smile that’s nothing like his megawatt Hatter grin, and something flutters inside me so I look away quickly and continue admiring the sweeping gardens. ‘I feel like I should have brought something. Like champagne and caviar, or a yacht or something.’
He laughs. ‘Terrible choices. I’m vegetarian and I don’t drink. And a yacht would never have fitted in your car.’
‘Me too! And me neither!’ I say, surprised we have that much in common. ‘I’ve been a vegetarian for years, and I can’t really afford to drink these days, so it feels better to make it a choice. Besides, I’m old now, the thought of getting rat-arsed and then spending all day nursing a hangover loses its appeal by your mid-twenties, I think.’
‘I’m weird enough without being drunk. And I’m really boring and spend most evenings eating too much cake and dozing off in front of the TV. I hate the vulnerability of being drunk and I morally object to doing things you’re “supposed” to do just to fit in.’
Why have I never noticed what a cracking outlook he’s got before? A teetotal vegetarian with eyeliner, two pierced ears, blue hair, and a really massive house, who is also refreshingly honest. He really is full of surprises, and so far today, they’ve been good ones.
He steps back and holds a hand out towards the entranceway. ‘Come in. You didn’t have to bring anything.’
He nods to the bag I’m carrying, because even though Bram said he had plenty of ingredients, it felt wrong not to bring my own. ‘It’s bad enough that you’re letting me use your kitchen.’
‘What’s bad about it?’
‘I’m thirty-four and don’t have a kitchen of my own, Bram!’
‘That’s not bad, it’s just the way the cards fall sometimes – forgive the pun and the fact I don’t have a deck of cards on me to perform a visual representation. Life isn’t easy and sometimes it’s harder than at other times. Besides, you’re just “between kitchens” at the moment.’ He points to a mat inside the door, where his neon yellow boots are, plus a pair of muddy wellies, and a pair of trainers, wordlessly telling me to take my shoes off. ‘All bad things pass eventually. Pretty soon kitchens will be between you.’
‘That sounds remarkably uncomfortable.’ I toe my trainers off and shift them onto the mat beside his yellow boots, and look up at the high ceiling and wide hallway. I instantly see why I had to take them off. We’re in a large hall that’s decorated in shades of cream and white, with gold accents. Under my feet is fluffy cream carpet, the walls are cream and hung with gold-framed prints of geometric shapes that look like placeholder pictures when you buy an empty photo frame.
‘Kitchen’s through here. Although feel free to look around, you won’t find much mischief to get into.’
‘I’m not a mischief type, Bram.’
‘That just means you haven’t met the right people to make mischief with. Everyone’s got a five-year-old child inside just waiting to get out. It can usually be coaxed out with silly string, party poppers, or a pack of crayons.’
I can’t imagine this pristine house has ever had a sniff of a party popper, much less a crayon.
I can’t resist peering through the doorless doorways of other rooms we pass. A living room with oversized white leather sofas, grey accents, a cream carpet. A dining room with an imposing mahogany table and eight chairs. A conservatory with arguably more light coming in through its enormous windows than there is outside. They’re all decorated in the same colourless colour scheme – a thousand shades of pale, and everything looks ultra-modern. Bram seems more of a colourful vintage type, but this could be something straight from an Ideal Home brochure.
‘Tea?’ His voice floats back down the hallway. I’ve dawdled and he’s disappeared.
‘You’re not in work now, you know.’
‘Always time for tea!’ he calls in that cheery Hatter voice and I follow it to find my way. Imagine having such a big house that you have to hunt for the kitchen. I follow the sound of china clinking and a kettle boiling and come to a large arched doorway that leads into a vast room.
‘Oh my God. Now this is a kitchen.’ I intend to look around in awe, but the first thing I see is a large red fire extinguisher, deliberately placed on the marble worktop opposite the doorway. ‘Very funny.’
He laughs without looking up from the kettle he’s pouring. ‘I was trying to rig it up to open the door by itself, but you arrived before I could figure it out. Thought it might make you feel better if you knew where it was.’
The kitchen is as awe-inspiring as the other rooms. The floor tiles are shiny mirror-glazed white, the cupboard doors are white with gold handles, and the work surface around the units must be pure marble, glistening white with flecks of gold sparkling through it. There’s a fridge and a freezer side by side, both taller than me, and an oven with a screen and so many buttons that you can probably earn some sort of engineering degree just by learning to operate it.
The only bit of colour is a large rectangular magnet on the front of the refrigerator with a slogan on it in a rainbow of blocky letters. It reads ‘this kitchen is for dancing’. ‘Is it?’
‘I’m not much of a rules person, but it’s my one and only rule.’
‘I hope it doesn’t apply to me because I can’t dance.’
‘Neither can I. That’s what makes it fun.’
I suppose I should’ve known that. He can’t sing either, and that really, really doesn’t stop him.
‘So what do you think? Can you make use of it?’
‘Bram, it’s…’ I look at him. His hair is the only thing that’s colourful about him tonight, but the kitchen is so astoundingly plain. I’ve never been to any home that was more unfitting of its owner. Bram is bright in every way, but this house has been to Magnolia Town and hit every branch of the cream tree on the way back. Bram is chaotic. Colourful. Lively. Loud. His house is bland, bland, bland. Everything looks so perfectly positioned that I expect it to be superglued in place, like it belongs in a photoshoot. ‘Yeah, of course. The thing is… I make a mess when I cook.’
‘Messes can be cleaned up,’ he says with a carefree shrug as he places a mug of tea on the unit and nudges it towards me, making the tea swish-swash in the cup and come perilously close to sploshing over the edges.
‘I know, it’s just… you could perform surgery in here, it’s so clinical. Operating theatres aren’t as pristine as this.’
At first, I think he might be offended, but then he grins and says, ‘Oh, so that’s what the team of scrubbed-up surgeons were doing here earlier.’
It’s a joke, but I can’t help feeling slightly uneasy that his house is so big, you could genuinely lose a team of surgeons inside it.
‘Have you eaten?’
I had a sandwich this afternoon in work, but nothing since. ‘By the time I’d got home and showered and changed…’
‘Me neither. Would you like a blueberry flower tart that I made last night?’ He’s already crossed the kitchen floor and opened the giant silver fridge, and when I go to protest, my stomach rumbles instead.
He comes back with a cake tin and opens the lid to reveal a beautiful display of tarts. I didn’t know what a blueberry flower tart was, but it’s a normal blueberry tart where the pastry case has been carefully split into petals and cooked in the shape of a flower, decorated with a big swirl of fresh cream and has a blueberry on the top. It’s simple and yet incredibly effective.
They’re small so I take two and he does the same, and it feels like he’s waiting for my verdict when I bite into one, and they taste as good as they look. The tartness of the blueberry filling perfectly balances the sweetness of the sugared cream and the pastry is buttery and melt-in-the-mouth.
The noise I make must convey how good it is because he bites into his own with a look of satisfaction. He seems so quiet tonight, everything about him is a world away from his usual exasperating self.
He invites me into the living room, but given the colour of his carpets and my unrivalled ability for staining light-coloured things, it’s best to stay put with tea and blueberry tarts. He reaches over to pull up a blind, revealing a window that looks out onto the park-like grounds and greenery surrounding his house, and leans on his elbows, looking out.
There’s nowhere to sit, so I do the same. The light is on inside and it’s getting dark outside, so the reflections block a lot of the view, but I can see neatly mowed grass and flower borders filled with waving daffodils, and a lawn with crocuses growing in it. A bird feeder with birds flying back and forth to it, and a pond in the distance with a trickling water feature. The only thing it’s missing is a few grazing fawns and wandering peacocks to make it into a real country park.
‘It’s not mine, by the way.’
‘What?’
‘The house. If you were wondering how a magician can afford a place like this. It’s my father’s property. He bought it years ago, spent a lot of money making it over, intending to sell it for a huge profit, and then the market crashed and it wasn’t worth selling. People are less likely to break in if it’s occupied, so I live here as a burglar deterrent. I was living in a really run-down hellhole of a block of flats. There was one too many stabbings in the stairwell and my mum took pity on me and persuaded my father that it made sense for me to move in here so the place wouldn’t be standing empty.’
I didn’t realise how relieved I’d be to hear that. ‘Thank God for that. This house is so not you. It’s so scarily different from you. I was starting to think you’d stolen the place from an IKEA catalogue. That makes so much more sense. I knew you wouldn’t voluntarily live somewhere so un-colourful.’
‘I think there’s a compliment buried in there somewhere.’ He tries to hide his grin behind taking a sip of tea. ‘My ex thought I was an embarrassment for being basically a glorified housesitter.’
It’s the first time he’s mentioned an ex or a relationship of any sort, and I can’t help being intrigued by what sort of person Bram would date. ‘I live in a rusty, leaky caravan on my friend’s driveway. I judge no one when it comes to living quarters. Whatever it takes to get through each day, right?’
‘Right.’ His eyes flick to mine and he gives me a small smile that’s full of understanding, and I like how different he is without his Mad Hatter walls up.
When we’ve finished eating, he puts the empty plates and mugs into an under-counter dishwasher, and pushes himself up to sit on the kitchen unit.
My veins are thrumming with nerves. I couldn’t bake in Marnie’s kitchen by myself the other night. Surely trying to do anything in an unfamiliar kitchen with Bram watching can only end in disaster.
There’s a couple of bookshelves on one wall, packed with beautiful recipe books, and he’s put out a pile of baking equipment, from mixing bowls to spatulas and measuring cups and cupcake cases, baking tins and oven trays, and keeps telling me to help myself to anything.
I brought a recipe with me, because I’m determined not to fail this time. A recipe for a batch of basic fairy cakes. The kind of recipe that can’t go wrong. Children make fairy cakes. I made fairy cakes with my mum when I was about six. I cannot have been better at baking at six than I am at thirty-four.
‘It must’ve been nice to grow up with a family tearoom…’ It’s clearly a leading sentence, and I’m sure he can sense my nerves and is trying to distract me.
I’m not sure how to answer him, but I measure out butter and sugar and cream them together, and the noise of the electric whisk convinces me that he won’t be able to hear what I’m saying anyway. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Mum hosted an Unbirthday party for me – ironically on the day it actually was my tenth birthday. She invited all my school friends to the tearoom, and she’d made a real Unbirthday cake, exactly like the pink one with blue flowers the Mad Hatter gives Alice in the animated film. When I blew out the candles, I made a wish that life would always be as magical as it was then and that I’d be like my mum when I grew up too. That was the last birthday before she left and life changed drastically.’
I stir in eggs and vanilla flavouring, and then fold in flour. ‘I overshared the rest earlier. I thought that cosy family tearoom would be my life. Never really considered that I would do anything else, and then when Nan died and it had to be sold, I found myself adrift. I’ve been adrift ever since.’
When the batter is smooth, I spoon it into cake cases. ‘And when I heard about Lilith and the tearooms, it sparked something inside me, and I wanted to bake again… and then I couldn’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says gently. ‘It sounds like you’ve had a rough few years. Enough to make anyone lose their spark…’
‘Alice has always been my comfort book. When I was little, my mum used to read it to me, and after she left, I was drawn to it again. I escaped into Wonderland. In my real life, nothing made sense, and reading a book where nothing made sense made it better somehow. Alice felt as lost as I was. I identified with her. I longed to wake up on a riverbank one day and discover it had all been a dream. Alice made me believe it was okay if things didn’t make sense and that things would be better soon, that one day I’d find the exit to my confusing, spiralling world too. I feel more like me than I have for years at The Wonderland Teapot. I’m finally doing something that would make my nan and mum proud, something that was meant for me, I want to make the things they used to make using our family recipes, and…’ I trail off. There isn’t any point finishing the sentence. He knows as well as I do that this is only ever going to be temporary if I can’t pull myself together and actually remember what those family recipes were.
The oven heats up in record time and I slide the baking tray into it while Bram loads the equipment I’ve used into the dishwasher and then invites me into the living room to wait.
‘I’m going to stay here and keep watch. Things go wrong when ovens are on.’
‘Okay.’ Without a moment of hesitation, he sits down cross-legged on the floor in front of the oven.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Keeping watch.’
‘Bram…’
‘There’s a David Attenborough documentary on the TV that I’ve seen several times before. This is far more interesting. It’s like The Great British Bake Off but I get to be Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith, minus the interesting jewellery choices. All we need now is Noel Fielding making bad jokes.’
I can’t help looking at him as he sits there, his elbows on his knees, his hands steepled under his chin with his head resting on them. ‘You don’t need to—’
‘You know what they say – good things come to those who…’
‘Wait?’ I offer.
‘…Make sizeable donations to the right politicians, but both are correct.’ He’s got a familiar cheeky grin on his face when he looks up at me with a one-shouldered shrug, and it makes me laugh much harder than it should do.
I sit down beside him and cross my legs under me. I’m intending to watch the cake batter start to rise in the lit-up oven interior, but I find my gaze being drawn back to the man beside me. I’ve sat close enough that my knee is touching his. Usually he smells of citrusy aftershave, but tonight it’s just shampoo and laundry fabric softener, and only the swish of the dishwasher and the fan of the oven fills the silence between us.
‘So, magic, huh?’ It sounds sharp and awkward and it’s increasingly obvious that in my two years of avoiding life, I’ve totally forgotten how to talk to other humans.
‘It’s just an oven.’ He holds a hand out in front of him, indicating the glass door we’re both looking through. ‘A mix of certain ingredients produce a chemical reaction when exposed to heat and do that thing known as “cooking”. Science, not magic.’
‘Oh, you’re a riot tonight,’ I mutter, even though I’m fighting not to laugh. At work, I think he’s trying too hard and I try not to find him funny, but tonight everything about him seems natural, and he’s hilarious without intending to be. ‘You know what I meant. I’ve never met a magician before… how long have you been doing magic?’
He looks over at me curiously, like he’s trying to work out if there’s an ulterior motive behind the question, and I feel bad again that this is the first time I’ve actually asked him anything about himself. It’s the first time I’ve needed to, because at The Wonderland Teapot, he keeps up a constant litany of chatter, and I’m always wishing he’d shut up, and definitely not encouraging him to talk more.
‘I started when I was twelve,’ he says eventually. ‘I didn’t have the easiest time growing up, and an uncle bought me one of those children’s magic kits for Christmas one year, and… it was everything I didn’t know I needed. It spoke to me. Back then, they were just basic tricks like balls under cups and linking and unlinking steel rings, the kind of thing that anyone could do, but I focused on perfecting those tricks and while I was concentrating on them, I forgot everything else that was going on. I learned harder and more difficult things. It was the first thing I really connected with. The first thing that made me feel like me. Magic gave me a sense of place in the world. I went from being too shy to put my hand up in class when a teacher asked a question to performing magic in front of school assemblies. It’s an ice breaker. I learned to separate the tricks from myself. I was awkward and terrible at communicating. I was always frozen by crippling shyness and if I bumbled my way through meeting someone, I was too embarrassed to ever talk to them again, but if I did a trick, I could tell myself that if they hadn’t liked my trick, that didn’t mean they didn’t like me, and it did so much for my confidence. It changed my childhood completely. It takes a lot for me to feel like I’m good at something, but I knew I was good at magic.’
I’m surprised by his passion and openness, and by the emotion in his voice. He’s obviously very good at what he does, but it had never occurred to me that it means that much to him, or that it could have such an enormous effect on a child.
‘Now I’m still shy and awkward and haven’t got a clue how to talk to people, but magic is an ice breaker.’ He holds his hand out, inviting me to shake it, and when I do, his long fingers curl around mine and he shakes my hand like we’re meeting for the first time. ‘Nowadays I don’t have to walk up to people and say, “Hi, I’m Bram, the least memorable human in the history of the world and you’ll have forgotten me before your next blink.” I can do a trick instead and make an impression, whether good or bad.’
I stifle another snort. Of all the strange things he says, that has got to be one of the strangest. ‘You? Shy? You, the Mad Hatter who yaks all day? You struggle to talk to people?’
‘Yes, actually.’ He lets go of my fingers and pulls his hand away like I’ve hurt him. ‘Is that really so hard to believe?’
I didn’t expect his sharp response, and I realise what’s just happened. He’s opened up to me, told me something that I doubt many other people know, and I’ve done exactly what he expected me to. ‘In the shop, yes. Tonight… no, it isn’t. I’m sorry. I try not to judge people based on their appearance, but I’ve been doing that since I met you.’
‘You know what they say,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Never judge a duvet by its cover.’
It’s his squeaky Mad Hatter voice again, the one he uses while playing the character, and it makes me wonder how much deeper this goes. More and more, I get the feeling that he plays a character in public to hide very real insecurities.
‘The one thing you’re not is unmemorable.’ I bite my lip. ‘You make an unforgettable impression on everyone you meet.’
‘Hatter does. The alternative-type magician I’ve played at the carousel does. But me? I don’t stand out in any way. I’m quiet. I like watching nature documentaries and reading books. I play video games. I’m not into sports. If I go out, it’s for a walk in the countryside. Sometimes the highlight of my day is a nice nap.’
I laugh even though I didn’t intend to because it feels like a serious moment. ‘If it helps, while Hatter has his good points, I think this side of you is the most intriguing one yet.’
I probably shouldn’t, but his knee is right there, next to mine, and I reach across and touch the back of my hand to it, his jogging bottoms well-worn and soft under my fingers.
He looks down at my hand and then his dark eyes flick up and meet mine. ‘Thank you.’
We hold each other’s gaze. I’ve become terrible at eye contact lately, but for once, I don’t want to look away, I want him to know that I see him tonight… and he’s nothing like I imagined he would be.
My hand is against his knee and he hasn’t dropped my gaze, and everything around us has gone very still and quiet and it’s like a magnet is pulling me towards him. It’s a tingle I haven’t felt for a very long time and I let out a breath, and in the stillness that was so fragile, it’s enough to break the spell.
He blinks and looks away. ‘You should check the cakes.’
‘Cakes! Yes!’ I scramble to my feet. God knows what I’m thinking, looking into Bram’s eyes and feeling tingles. He might be different than I thought, but just getting out the door every morning is a hard enough life achievement at the moment, without thinking about adding further complications. I don’t do things like looking into people’s eyes any more. That only ever leads to trouble.
He’s got to his feet too and he hands me an oven glove and a skewer, and I open the oven door and slide the skewer into one of the cakes. It comes out clean and they look the right shade of golden brown, so I get them out.
‘And you say you can’t cook.’ Bram elbows my arm gently as we look at the steaming tray of cakes on the unit. ‘They look amazing.’
Maybe it is just a kitchen issue after all. Maybe every previous disaster has been down to bad luck or fluke coincidences that couldn’t have been avoided in any set of circumstances, and a beautiful modern kitchen is the key to unlocking my potential. ‘Maybe you’re my lucky charm.’
‘Awwwww.’ He reaches out to take a cake. ‘Now that’s definitely the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘Oi! You can’t have one yet, they need to cool down and be iced!’
‘If you think I’ve sat in front of an oven for twenty minutes just so I can wait another hour for decoration, you’re as sorely mistaken as my glutes are after sitting on the floor for so long. Besides, it’s a fact of life that nothing will ever taste as good as when you’re burning your mouth on it, mere seconds after it comes out of the oven.’
I want to be annoyed but I appreciate his enthusiasm, and there are sixteen of them, so more than enough for us to sample one now and then decorate them later. My head is filled with visions of tomorrow being the very first day that I serve customers genuine homemade cakes, lovingly made from scratch and exquisitely decorated. It will be the start of what I wanted to do with the tearoom from the beginning.
He’s already peeling the cake case off, and he keeps shifting the cake around and shaking his fingers because it’s too hot, but as I’m coming to learn, there’s not much that can deter Bram from cake.
I take one too and flap my hand to disperse the steam, and I can’t help watching as he takes a big bite of his.
‘Oh my God,’ he says around a mouthful.
‘That good?’ I can feel my face light up as I get the case off mine and take a bite too. ‘Oh my God.’
I echo his words but it is not the good kind of ‘oh my God’. What the heck is that? Because I’ve eaten many cakes over the course of my life, and that doesn’t resemble any of them.
Bram’s face shifts to revulsion and he speaks with his mouth stuffed. ‘I’m going to need a crowbar to prise my teeth out of this.’
It does tend to take to your teeth and form a bond with them, a bit like denture fixative in edible form. I’m trying to inch it out of my mouth without taking any fillings with it, and he’s trying not to gag as he leans over to spit the unfortunate bit he’d bitten off into the bin.
‘Crikey, that was like eating an armchair.’ At least he’s laughing as he throws the remaining cake into the bin too. ‘What did you do to this?’
‘I don’t know!’ I say helplessly. ‘I followed the recipe! You watched me!’
‘Was one of the ingredients Polyfilla? Did it call for butter, sugar, and four tablespoons of wallpaper paste? When you went to buy your ingredients, did the shop have a big sign saying “B&Q” outside?’
He makes me laugh even though I want to cry. How can a simple cake go so very, very wrong? ‘I used to be able to do this with my eyes closed.’
‘Did you have your eyes closed? Because that could explain a lot…’ He takes another cake and pokes at it. ‘I’m actually very impressed that anyone can make a fairy cake go that horribly wrong. That’s a skill in itself.’
‘Maybe they’ll be better when they’ve cooled down?’ I say hopefully.
‘When they’ve cooled down, you’ll be able to send them to warzones and substitute them for cannonballs.’
He’s being kind there.
‘Place them very gently in the bin, lest they crack the floor tiles and go straight through to the magma of the earth’s core.’
I make a noise of frustration and drop my head into my hands. ‘I did exactly as it said.’
‘Never mind. We’ll try again. Come over tomorrow night and I’ll help, see if we can figure out where you’re going wrong. At a guess, I’d say you got to the part where it says to fold in the flour and then accidentally transferred it into a cement mixer…’
‘This is hopeless,’ I mutter without lifting my head. ‘This is what happens every time I get near a kitchen now, and it’s so disheartening. Everything comes out tasting like this – or worse.’
‘There’s no such thing as hopeless.’ He reaches out to give my shoulder a squeeze. ‘You know what they say – practice makes better. Frustrated, but ultimately, better.’
For once, his habit of getting sayings wrong actually makes sense. ‘Not perfect?’
‘I don’t think anyone’s perfect, are they?’
I lift my head and look over my shoulder at him. ‘Very insightful.’
He’d been leaning on the unit too, and he pushes himself up, sweeps the remaining cakes into the bin with a comment about not recycling anything so potentially hazardous to public health, and heads for the kitchen door. ‘I’ll come to the supermarket with you to choose tomorrow’s Wonderland options. There’s one ten minutes away from here. It’s good to mix it up, make sure you don’t arouse suspicion in your regular one by buying enough baked goods to feed an army every day.’
‘Bram, you don’t have—’
‘I want to.’ He cuts off my protest. ‘Come on, we can take my car, we’ll be there in a jiffy. And when we get back, you can help me make another batch of those blueberry flower tarts, so at least there’ll be something homemade to offer tomorrow.’
‘I didn’t want to get you involved in this.’ I follow him out into the hallway. There’s something lovely about how easy-going he is and how he takes everything in his stride.
‘It’s okay. Between us, we’ve got customers to feed and entertain, and a bit of crossover never hurt anybody.’
At the front door, he shoves his feet into well-worn trainers and I tug mine back on, and watch in fascination as he steps over to a mirror and pulls on a grey knitted beanie hat, and tucks his hair underneath it, pushing the blue locks up and pulling the hat down until every strand of hair is hidden. He takes a baseball cap and pulls that on over the top.
‘It’s not that much of an incognito mission.’
‘I know.’ His eyes flick to mine in the mirror. ‘But having blue hair makes people look at you and sometimes I don’t feel like being looked at.’
Now that I understand. My extrovert Hatter is more of an introvert than I imagined.
He picks up a set of car keys and opens the front door, and I step out and stand aside as he locks up.
‘You’re really different than I thought you’d be,’ I say as we walk down the steps.
And right on cue, he jumps off the steps from the third up, lands with a pirouette and a splash of gravel under his feet and spins around. ‘I’m still going to drive you up the wall at work tomorrow.’
I meet his eyes and smile. ‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’
He walks backwards across the courtyard without dropping eye contact as he grins at me, and this time, it’s very much a Bram grin and not a Hatter one.