Page 64 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
Scarlett shakes her head as though she doesn’t believe me.
‘Well, if you’re sure.’ Ebony’s voice is wobbling.
‘I’m sure.’ My own voice shakes. I’m the furthest thing from sure, but this feels like a moment that’s been coming for months, if not years, and there’s a catharsis in finally confronting it. Ebony and I are never going to agree, and one of us has to be brave enough to accept that.
She comes over and holds a hand out to tug me to my feet and pulls me into a hug. I can’t remember the last time I hugged her. We used to have Sunday dinners at her house every week, and now, I don’t know when I last saw her outside of the shop. I don’t know anything about her life in recent months, and she doesn’t know anything about mine. We’ve become strangers who do nothing but bicker over work, and in that moment, no matter what has come between us, I’d rather have an aunt than continue trying to save The Cinderella Shop.
She holds a hand out to Scarlett too, and hauls all three of us into a group hug. It’s something we used to do all the time, when Scarlett and I were still young and Ebony was still finding her way in the world of shopkeeping, a morale boosting thing that made us feel like the team we were. Us against the world, united by the unexpected twists life had thrown at us.
‘You can stay in the flat for as long as you need. Here, I’ll even give you the key so you’ll know I can’t walk in.’ When we eventually release each other, Ebony swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand as she twists a key from her keyring and holds it out to me.
‘Why do people keep giving me keys this morning?’ I laugh through my own tears.
‘Who else has given you keys?’ Scarlett’s voice sounds thick and emotional.
‘Witt, earlier. It was something to do with the castle, but we never got as far as what.’
‘As much as I don’t want that old place to be sold, I’ve never understood why you’re so obsessed with it when there are so many nasty stories about it,’ Ebony mutters. ‘Nothing good has ever happened there.’
‘Yes it has. My parents met there. I met Witt there.’
‘And everyone conveniently forgets the mad viscount who killed himself in front of his son.’
My blood turns to ice and every hair on my body stands on end. ‘What?’
‘The viscount shot himself in front of his young son and the boy disappeared, never to be seen again.’ She shivers and continues muttering about hauntings and evil spirits, but I don’t hear another word.
I feel like a Rubik’s Cube when the coloured squares all click into the right places. A dot-to-dot puzzle when the dots finally connect in jagged, painful understanding. More tears fill my eyes and my hands cover my mouth to hide the gasp of anguish. ‘It’s Witt.’
‘What’s Witt?’ Scarlett asks.
‘Who’s Witt?’ Ebony says jokingly until Scarlett gives her a death glare.
I can’t make sense of what I suddenly understand. ‘In all the stories we’ve heard about that place, I’ve never, ever heard that the viscount had a son, have you?’
Scarlett shakes her head, looking confused. ‘How do you know that’s not just another story?’
I turn to Ebony. ‘Because you would’ve heard it from the one person who knew. My mum. Their family friend.’
She gives me a sad smile and nods.
‘That’s what he was trying to tell me this morning. He’s not an estate agent come to do house clearance. He’s the boy from the castle. He’s told me so many times without telling me. He saw his dad die when he was ten. He was sent away. From that very first night, I said it was like he was remembering and I told myself it was from his estate agent paperwork, but it wasn’t. He really was remembering. The other day when we were in the river, he said something about seeing this place again. I thought it was just a word slip at the time, but it was real. He’s been seeing this whole placeagain. He teared up when I was going on about the people who used to live at the castle. Why would an estate agent tear up at that? But if those old ghosts had been his family… Oh God, the portraits on the wall! I’m such an idiot. There are three portrait spaces on the wall. One is smaller. I joked that it was the viscount’s second wife, but it wasn’t, was it? It was his son. When he showed me the dresses my mum made for the first viscountess, there was such a fondness about him, as though he remembered them. An estate agent wouldn’t feel like that. He felt like that because she was his mother, and she died when he was four or five. His father ended up in a loveless marriage – with the second viscountess, a gold-digger, a story we’ve heard many times before.’
‘Your mum said the viscount was never the same after his wife died,’ Ebony says. ‘He lost touch with friends and locked himself away in the castle and was hardly ever seen. People forgot about them.’
Like the Beast’s castle after it was cursed. It was always there, but no one knew who was inside. It became a relic while it was still occupied. A grieving viscount and his young son, shrouded from the world, metaphorically imprisoned in the towers of the castle. Hesaidthat on the night of the ball. Heshowedmehisprison, and I never realised.
‘So, you’re saying Witt is the owner?’ Scarlett says. ‘He’sthe one selling it to a supermarket?’
‘No. Yes. I don’t— ohGod.’ The realisation of what he meant by that last question before he left hits me like a truck. He wasn’t asking me if I knew he was the estate agent. He was asking me if I knew he was theowner. ‘He thinks I knew. He thinks I targeted him at the ball. This is…’ It goes so much deeper than I ever imagined. He has so much misery connected to that castle, and I’ve made it so much worse. ‘He must’ve come here to, what, lay old ghosts to rest for one final time, and instead he meets me, and all I do is wax lyrical about how wonderful the castle is, run away after a midnight kiss, and then use that midnight kiss to try to save Ever After Street. No wonder he thinks I used him.’
‘Oh come on, you had no idea.No onehad any idea,’ Scarlett says and Ebony nods in agreement. ‘But this means the castle is saved, right?’ Scarlett’s one second away from a happy dance.
‘That was before, Scar. Before all this. Before he found out. If anything, what I’ve done will have pushed him into selling it immediately. After how much I’ve hurt him, he won’t want it now, will he? That’s what he was trying to say this morning – that he was thinking of keeping it. That’s what that was all about yesterday when he asked us what we’d do with the castle. The way he left so abruptly – he went off to think it through. He said he hadn’t slept this morning – I think he’d been up all night going over it, and he’d finally decided, and then…’ I look down at the shoe where I’ve left it on the seat. ‘I’ve made him hate everything. I’ve proved his theory that people only love you if they can get something out of you. He’s never going to see it any other way. The only thing he’s going to do now is go straight back to Scotland and erase every memory of this place – from the pastandthe present, and it’s my fault.’
I’ve broken my own heart and the heart of the only person who could save the castle, and I wish I had a magic clock that could turn back time, because I’d do anything to undo this curse and bring back the light that has lit up the castle in recent weeks.
18
