Page 63 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
‘Did you find him?’ Scarlett asks.
‘No, he’s gone. Probably for good. And what else do I deserve? Wedidtake advantage of him, didn’t we? We exploited what he felt that night and we set up this thing of looking for someone he wasn’t going to find. He deserves better than that. He deserves someone who would’ve opened that door the next morning and said, “Oh, it’s you.” And I didn’t do that.’
‘Neither did he. If he knew the truth all along, he could have stopped it at any time, and he didn’t. I know it’s been great for the shop, but it hasn’t been about that since you started getting to know him – and he was never looking for anyone, it was only about getting to knowyou. He knows that, he just needs a minute.’
‘You didn’t see him. My heart broke when he joked about being in love the other day, and I’ve just seen the same thing happen to him, except I couldn’t turn around and tell him it was all a big joke. A “minute” to cool off won’t change that.’
‘Scarlett tells me I may not have helped matters…’ Ebony’s voice is much quieter than her usual booming tone.
I go to shout at her but stop myself before any words come out. Instead, I squelch over and snatch the shoe from her hand. ‘Where did you get this? Because I knowexactlywhere it was and I want to know what you’ve been doing in my flat, and specifically, in my bedside drawer.’
‘It’s not your flat. It belongs to me. I have every right to be there.’
‘It’s my private space. You might let me stay there, but never with a stipulation that you can poke your nose in anytime you fancy!’
‘I was looking for something.’ She juts her chin out.
‘In my bedside drawer?’
‘I’m a landlord, I have a right to inspect my property. I’ve noticed some of these dresses are not the second-chance returned ones. You’ve obviously been moonlighting, and I wanted to know what you’d been hiding up there. The last thing I expected to find was the other shoe.’
‘You had no right,’ I splutter, feeling so overwhelmingly bleak that I’m even struggling to muster up my earlier anger.I’mthe one who hid the shoe. I’m the one who should have been honest with Witt from the start. It was going to come out in one way or another. No matter how Ebony found it, I can’t blame her for this.
As though she can tell what I’m thinking, she shifts awkwardly from foot to foot before speaking again. ‘I’m sorry about the tall man. I genuinely thought you were in on it together. If it wasn’t only for the publicity, I don’t understand why you didn’t tell him straight away and save all this palaver?’ She waves a hand between the Cinderella dress in the window and the computer on the counter.
‘Because look at me,’ I say without thinking. ‘Because I’m plain and unnoticeable and I fade into the background of every situation. I’m the complete opposite of the woman he met in that dress. I didn’t think he’d like me as I am. Him not recognising me only heightened that.’
‘Maybe it’s a good thing in the long run, Sadie. You don’t want to get involved with someone who lives so far away. It would never have worked out, would it?’ There’s a sympathetic tone in her voice that makes me think she’s being nice, even though a flame of defensiveness starts in my stomach too. Maybe it would have worked out. It felt like it would, somehow, no matter how much distance was between us. It felt like it was worth fighting for.
‘Anyway, enough moping.’ She claps her hands together sharply. ‘We’ll get this silly second-chance ball out of the way and then get things back to normal. You can be proud of yourself for clearing some much-needed space in the storage room, but this has gone on for long enough now. What we all need is a return to normality and to forget all about the past few weeks.’
‘Normality?’ It’s enough to stoke that defensive flame in my belly into a full-blown fire. ‘Because normality was going so well for all of us, wasn’t it? The past few weeks have been the best of my life. The last thing I want to do is forget them. I went to the ball because Iwantedto go, and I met this incredible man there. And my biggest regret is leaving him that night, because over the past few weeks, I’ve been able to see a future with him…’ Something else comes into sharp focus and I sink down into a seat as I realise how true it is. ‘And I no longer see a future here.’
‘What?’
‘I’m done, Ebony. I can’t do this any more.’
‘Because of him?’
‘No, because of me. Witt’s made me realise what it’s like when someone truly believes in me, and he’s shown me that it’s not a bad thing to expect that from the people I work withandthe only family I have. I can’t keep working here, sewing dresses that I don’t believe in and rarely even like. We’ve lost what The Cinderella Shop set out to be. All my mum wanted to do was spread joy through her love of sewing, and it’s become bitter and unrecognisable, like a castle surrounded by twisted thorns, and I can’t keep working for someone who doesn’t believe in me. This shop could be so much more than it is. In the past few weeks, we’ve shown you how much good we can do, I’ve proved that we can turn things around, and even now, you still don’t believe in me. You can see how many dresses we’ve sold and how many customers we’ve got, how much people are talking about us online, and you’restillon about going back to the way things were before. You’re so set in your own approach that you won’t even consider that my opinion might be worth listening to and my ideas might be valid.’ I’m still holding the shoe in my hand and I fiddle with it as I speak. ‘I want so much for this place, and I will never, ever be allowed to do it with you in charge. I’ve always thought my mum and dad would be disappointed in me for leaving, but now, I think they’d be proud. They’d understand that we can’t carry on like this. You and me at loggerheads and Scarlett stuck in the middle. We were a team once. The three of us wanted the same thing – to make my parents proud, but everything has got lost along the way, including our relationship as aunt and niece, and I don’t want to lose that by continuing to fight. You were supposed to give me this shop when you considered me ready, and you will never, ever come to that conclusion, and I can’t carry on watching you run it into the ground while waiting for a day that will never come. It’s time for me to go.’
‘Sade, no,’ Scarlett says.
‘I’ll finish my outstanding orders, but I won’t take on any new ones. You’re going to have to find someone else or let The Cinderella Shop die with the castle. Because that’s what it’s doing. And I don’t want to see that happen and feel like I could’ve done something about it. I’m going to look for somewhere nearby, a little shop on a high street somewhere, with enough space to sew, have fittings, and display the dresses I want to make. Spread a little Cinderella magic somewhere else.’
‘This is why you’ve been making dresses and hiding them in your flat? Preparing for months to usurp me and steal our customers?’
‘No! But thank you for confirming you really do think the worst of me. I sew at nights in my flat because it’s the only chance I have to make anything that I like. That I believe in. That I want customers to wear. There’s a market for dresses like the ones I make in my free time. Ones that everyday people can wear. Dresses that make people feel specialandthat they can afford. That’s what my mother wanted when she started, and that’s what I’ve always wanted too, and I can’t keep pretending it isn’t.’
‘It sounds like we want to run two different businesses.’
‘We have for a long while now, and it’s time to admit that. You’re my aunt and the only mother I’ve had since I was ten years old.Thatis more important than a brick-and-mortar shop, and I don’t want to lose that because of our constant clashes over work.’
She looks as if she’s about to cry.
‘Sade, this isn’t what you want,’ Scarlett says.
‘I want to go to work every day and feel like I’ve felt for the past few weeks. That is never going to happen here, no matter how much I love Ever After Street. And the castle… I don’t think Icanwatch every day as it’s torn down brick by brick. I can’t watch lorries trundling through the Full Moon Forest and destroying every inch of it. I’m protecting myself by getting out now.’
