Page 57 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
‘Just because you haven’t read the emails for weeks doesn’t mean they’re not still piling up. We’re not taking that dress down. It’s the best thing that’s happened to The Cinderella Shop in years.’
He looks over at the dress doubtfully. ‘Well, I want to helpyou.’ He looks back at me, and then quickly corrects himself. ‘Both. I want to help youboth, the shop as a whole, but so long as you know that’sallthis is about. I’m not going to find her this way, but if it’s doing some good for The Cinderella Shop… For you, Sade, in whatever you do next…’
I can see Scarlett’s ears prick up. I haven’t told her about my idea of giving Ebony an ultimatum yet, and she doesn’t know I’ve been casually googling property prices in the area and trying to figure out if I could afford to rent somewhere new to sell my dresses from. Trying to figure out if I could be brave enough to go it alone. It’s easy to think about it with Witt’s support, but he’s going to be gone soon, and I really will bealone.
In the way that people who have been almost-sisters and best friends since they were ten years old often do, Scarlett understands without a word being spoken. She makes the connection between the look in my eyes, the sketches half-hidden under the counter, and how unhappy and discouraged I’ve been lately. How we’vebothbeen lately.
‘You know I want to go full-time as a hairdresser,’ she says casually. ‘If you’re going to do anything rash… count me in. This place is dying before our eyes and that dress, and the Cinderella story, is the only thing that’s giving us a chance to fight it at the moment.’
Witt glances at me again. ‘Who am I to argue with that?’
As Scarlett’s here to cover the shop, I’ve got a custom order for a butterfly wing dress where each layer of the skirt is patterned to look like a Monarch butterfly’s wing, so I’ve got bolts of duchesse satin laid out on my cutting mat on the floor of the back room as I slice around my pattern pieces with a rotary cutter, and Witt hovers in the doorway between the shop floor and the back room, watching me work.
‘You going to be in trouble for all the work you haven’t done lately?’ Scarlett asks him. ‘You’ve been spending more time with us than you have at the castle valuing antiques or whatever you’re supposed to be doing.’
‘Just sorting the place out. Making sure everything important is included in the final valuation and the owner is suitably compensated.’
‘Because the rich racoon clearly needsmoremoney,’ she mutters. ‘Leaving it to fall into disrepair, decades of neglect, letting Ever After Street do the dirty work and then sweeping the rug out from under our feet at the first sniff of cash, selling to a supermarket motivated only by greed, because Ever After Street – the only people who have given that castle a second thought in years – can’t match what a multi-million multi-national powerhouse can offer, even though it belongs as a castle, not a supermarket.’
Witt stays quiet. He paces in the doorway for a while, knotting his fingers together and making it impossible for me to concentrate on what I’m cutting out.
‘Can I ask you both something?’ he says eventually. ‘What would you do with the castle?’
‘Dowith it?’ Scarlett asks from the shop.
‘Yeah. It doesn’t do anything. It just stands there.’
‘What do you want it to do? The foxtrot? A nice Charleston?’ I look up at him.
He laughs. ‘Sorry, I’m rubbish at making myself understood. I just mean… it doesn’t bring anything to Ever After Street other than its presence. Old buildings like that are a financial sinkhole. It’s probably been left to fall into disrepair because the owner can’t afford to – or doesn’t want to – upkeep it. If this was to end in any way other than being sold to a supermarket, I just wondered… in the eyes of two idealistic young dreamers who work in the shadow of it and still believe in the goodness of the universe, what would you want it to become in an ideal world?’
‘Been a long time since I was idealisticoryoung.’ Scarlett scoffs. ‘Why? Do you think you can get a message to the owner? Try to talk him out of it?’
‘No. Strictly forbidden. I work on behalf of an agency who have contact only from “his people”. There are no direct lines of communication, and it wouldn’t be my place, even if there were.’ He sighs. ‘No, I was just thinking. Daydreaming. Wondering what I’d do if it was mine. Trying to imagine the world being a better place than it is.’
‘I’d open it up to the public.’ I sit back on my knees. ‘The place is incredible. You know those famous castles in Germany? Neuschwanstein, Lichtenstein, Eltz… Those places get thousands of visitors every year. They’re a tourist attraction in their own right.’
‘But places like that have rich and interesting histories. This one was built by some dodgy Tudor who got a false honour in Henry the Eighth’s court and conned his way into a meaningless title that’s been passed down for generations through some not-very-stable family lines and everything it once meant has been lost under decades of ghost stories.’
‘You really have been doing your homework.’ Scarlett sounds impressed. ‘Do you know what happened there? I’d love to know whatreallybecame of the viscount and viscountess. They say he murdered her and then locked himself in a dungeon and starved to death under the weight of his own guilt.’
‘There are no dungeons. Why are people so obsessed with dungeons in castles?’
‘Butthatin itself is interesting,’ I say. ‘I never knew anything about who built it. To share somerealhistory of the castle and to let people seewhyit’s so special would be amazing. You saw how many people were at the ball – I’m sure a vast majority of them were there out of curiosity about the castle rather than from any desire to attend a fancy ball. I made a few dresses after the invites went out – customers were abuzz with a chance to finally see inside. If it was open to the public, people would buy tickets and day passes and come here on family outings. It could host other events too, like weddings. You’d be surprised by how many brides-to-be I get asking if it can be booked for weddings.’
‘Really?’ He looks down at me with a surprised gaze, and I scramble up off the floor because I’m getting overexcited by so many possibilities. ‘Why would anyonewantto get married at a scene of horror and despair?’
‘Because it’s roman—’
‘Trust me, whatever happened there isnotromantic.’
‘Not the actual events. The castle as a whole. Who wouldn’t want to get married in such a beautiful, Disney-ish place, but couldn’t afford the cost of getting married overseas and hiring an actual Disneyland castle as a wedding venue?’
‘You’re underestimating how much people love this castle,’ Scarlett adds. ‘There are so many ways it could be used for something better than a money-grabbing supermarket.’
He looks at me for a long moment. ‘When I got chatting to Ali last night, he was saying that he’d love to hire the castle out as a restaurant. He said things get so cramped at 1001 Nights, there’s no room for expansion, and he’d like to be able to offer something really special for special occasions and it got me thinking about what could go on there, that’s all.’
‘It could host other events too. It just takes a bit of thinking outside the box.’
