Page 32 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
Witt finished going through the emails yesterday, but he’s come back today to have a look at the next lot that have landed in the inbox overnight. I’ve finished the prom dress and sent a happy customer and her mum on the way, cut pattern pieces of purple velvet for a Regency-style dress someone’s ordered for a Jane Austen weekend, and he’s gone out to get sustenance from the teashop down the street.
The bell above the door tinkles as Witt comes back in, holding two takeaway coffees with a bag of pastries balanced on top of them. ‘I feel like my childhood never ended when I walk around out there. I want to ride the carousel and get tiger stripes painted on my face.’
‘Why don’t you?’
He puts a coffee cup down on the counter for me. ‘I’m six foot three and weigh, well, more than enough to break those poor wooden horses.’
‘You know, the point of Ever After Street is to prove you’re never too old for anything. Unbridled joy is not an emotion limited to childhood. Fun has no age limit.’
He makes a noise in his throat and looks at me like he wishes he believed that, and then changes the subject. ‘Do you know how many people are taking selfies outside with the dress?’
There are three middle-aged ladies out there now, posing with the dress in the window behind them, and they’re not the first people I’ve seen stop for a selfie today. ‘It would be even nicer if they’d come in and buy something.’
As if on cue, the door opens and the three ladies traipse in.
‘Oh, heaven’s me, that dress!’ one of them exclaims when she sees us standing at the counter. ‘You couldn’t make one of those for a post-menopausal overweight donkey like me, could you?’
‘I can make anything for anyone,’ I say, struggling to muster much enthusiasm because these enquiries always go the same way. They start excitedly talking about what they want, and then ask about how much it will cost, and that’s the end of the conversation. ‘What did you have in mind?’
She starts talking about a flared gown like the dress in the window but maybe in purple and then gets to the kicker. ‘What kind of price are we talking?’
I stumble and stutter, and eventually settle on a figure of £500. There is alotof material in that dress and it took alotof hours to make, and Ebony insists on pricing high.
The woman visibly pales. ‘Oh, er, I’ll have to think about it. Maybe notthisweek…’
She makes eye contact with her friend, and they go to the door to wait for the third lady. She’s found a beadwork halter-neck dress in a pink to purple ombre colour and is running her fingers down the multi-layered skirt. She looks enamoured with it, until she picks up the sign on the display plinth that shows the price. She slams it down in shock and backs away until she bumps into her two waiting friends and they make such a hasty exit that you’d think a monster had emerged from the depths of the organza.
‘Come back,’ I say to the empty shop, watching through the window as they make their way over to the teashop, undoubtedly needing a cuppa to settle their nerves after seeing such high prices. ‘We can make other dresses. Nice dresses. For affordable prices. We just… urgh.’ I trail off in frustration and drop my head into my hands. No wonder we’re sinking. What ordinary person has a spare 500 quid for adress?
I can feel Witt’s eyes on me. ‘Do you mind me asking what I’m seeing here?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ I say, the words muffled through my hands.
‘I genuinely do.’ He’s standing on the other side of the counter and he picks up my dressmaker’s tape, unrolls it, rolls it back up again, and uses his finger to make a steeple out of it. ‘When I came in yesterday and your aunt was here, I could’ve popped the tension with a pin. A colour-blind orangutan in the depths of the Bornean jungle could tell there’s something going on here. You and Ebony have… differing visions for the shop?’
When I look up, his eyes are kind and he gives me a soft, encouraging smile.
‘The Cinderella Shop should be mine. It was the love of my mum and dad’s life. She sewed the dresses and he ran the admin side of the business. Every dress she made was special because shelovedeach one. She took her time, she got to know each client, and she sold her dresses for reasonable prices. She filled this shop with beautiful, demure clothing, from ballgowns to everyday summer tea dresses that people could afford. She made clothes that were both special and wearable for any occasion, and slipping one on felt like wearing magic. People were reduced to tears in the changing rooms because she justgotthem. I’ve loved sewing since I was old enough not to puncture my fingers with the sewing machine needle, and I never wanted to do anything other than follow in my mum’s footsteps. But I was too young when they died, so it was left to Ebony on the condition that she would pass it on to me when she deemed me ready.’
‘Let me guess, the call of the business expenses account is so loud that she hasn’t deemed you ready yet.’ God, his eyes. There is so much kindness and understanding in them. He’s the kind of person you could tell anything and know he’d never judge you for it.
Another passer-by outside takes a photo of the dress in the window and I tell him about the differing visions Ebony and I have, the frustration at her high prices, insistence on making dresses that no one but a flamboyant clown would wear, and the constant swallowing of funds to chase minor celebrities across the globe. ‘She’s convinced exclusivity is the way to go. She keeps saying that all it will take is one celebrity wearing one of our dresses to a red-carpet event, and we’ll be designing for the stars and rolling in money, but I can’t agree, and we keep clashing. She wants social media influencers and reality TV stars with millions of followers and bags of disposable cash, but I just want to make people happy, like my mum did. But she’s the boss. I just work here, and she never listens to what I have to say and sees no value in my ideas. And her gimmicky guarantee is wiping us out. I spend hours making a dress, someone wears it for an evening, and returns it saying they haven’t found love and gets their money back, and then it sits unworn in the back room with all the others, forevermore. Ebony thinks it makes us memorable – and it does, when someone wants a dress for a one-off event without paying for it.’
All the while, Witt listens intently. He doesn’t drop eye contact, he doesn’t interrupt, and I realise I’ve never told anyone this before. I’ve got no one else close enough to share stuff like this with except Scarlett and she knows it anyway. ‘I just want her to realise that I know what I’m talking about. I have the experience, I know the people who shop on Ever After Street, and I have ideas for how we could take this place back to the glory days, but she never listens.’
‘More fool her.’
I smile at the kind sentiment, but it doesn’t help, not really. ‘I think my parents didn’t want me to be tied down or to feel obligated to take over their business if I wanted to do something else with my life.’
‘Surely you can challenge that legally?’
‘Firstly, that costs money, and secondly, I don’t want any bad blood with my aunt. I don’t want to drag her through the courts. I just want her to value me.’
‘You’ve been working here for averylong time…’
I see what he’s hinting at in his typically kind way. What Scarlett is always telling me in her typically blunt way. If Ebony hasn’t deemed me ready by now, it’s unlikely that she ever will. My only hope is making a success of this missing Cinderella campaign. But to do that, I’m using him, and the better I get to know him, the worse it feels. ‘Everything will work out in the end. I believe that. If you keep working hard, keep your head down, keep being a good person, eventually hard work will be recognised and rewarded.’
He makes that all-too-familiar noise of cynicism again. ‘That’s the opposite of what is true. You have to go out and take what you want.’
