Page 16 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
The gate isn’t far. Through the hedge that hides the gardens from sight and I’m back at the entrance, doormen still on the door where I handed my ticket in hours ago.
There are footsteps behind me. He’s following.
I race down the stone walkway, walled on either side, and his footsteps are getting closer. Mine echo up from the ground below, leaving no secret of where I’m going.
His legs are a hell of a lot longer than mine and he can cover ground much faster than I can. And it’s not that I don’t want him to – it’s that hecan’tcatch up. Ebony is probably already at the shop. If I have any chance of saving myself, I cannot go barrelling in wearing a ballgown with a handsome prince on my heels. She’s not going to believe that I picked him up on a late-night wander round Lidl, is she?
My wedge heels are a hindrance on the cobblestones and the dress is so floofy that it’s a hazard, even though I’m trying to keep it gathered up. I can sense his moonlit silhouette behind me, gaining on me, and I do the only thing I can think of. I reach down and yank my shoes off. I’m not used to heels and I’m slipping and sliding every which way. I usually walk around in socks at work and only shove flat shoes on when I see a client. I’m better barefoot.
I try to bundle them together in the same hand so I’ve still got one free to steady myself, but it’s just too much and I drop the pair of them. I grab one, but one has rolled behind me, and I turn to go back for it, but he’s right there, already halfway down the walled walkway. A few strides and he’ll catch me.
‘Wait!’ he calls. ‘Please wait!’
I meet his eyes across the distance, one final time, and then I force myself to turn and run, leaving the shoe. A pair of shoes is a small price to pay for any hope of getting back to the shop before Ebony.
If I stay on the main path to Ever After Street, he’ll catch up in seconds. Instead of following it, I jump the wall at the end of the stone road to the castle, scramble down the bank, and disappear into the depths of the Full Moon Forest.
It’s not a very Cinderella-esque exit, far from hordes of palace guards thundering after me on horseback, but at least it’s not the original Grimm Brothers’Cinderellawith the tar on the stairs. That would’ve been seriously messy.
I can hear him calling ‘Come back!’ but it’s distant now. I dash through wild raspberry bushes, jump over roots and slip between tree trunks. These aremywoods. I know them better than the back of my hand, and tonight they are my saviour. They provide a shortcut back to Ever After Street. Years of wandering through them, daydreaming of the fairies that are said to live here, escaping from school bullies and my aunt’s unreasonable demands, it all feels like it led to this moment, because when I need them the most, the forest gives me the cover I need to disappear, and I’m at the back door of the shop in minutes.
It’s mercifully silent. She isn’t here yet.
I fall into the back room and nearly impale myself on a coat hanger as I unhook the fastenings of my dress and clamber out of it. I yank my mask off and with it comes the rose he tucked behind my ear.
There’s the rev of a car engine from out the front. Ebony. I shove the dress onto a rail of returned dresses to hide it and bury my one remaining shoe under a pile of fabric on my workbench. I grab a spare piece of satin and rub it over my face to get rid of the make-up, yank on a long T-shirt, and—
‘Sadie!’ Her key turns in the lock and a breeze rushes in as she opens the door.
‘I’m up! I’m up!’ I shout, shoving a hand through my hair to pull out the half-up do and dragging out a handful of sparkly pins that skitter across the floor. I kick them aside and rush out the front, stumbling to a dishevelled halt centimetres away from barrelling into Ebony’s composed form.
‘What on earth happened to your hair?’
‘Scarlett! Scarlett was practising; I must’ve fallen asleep while she was doing it.’
‘If that’s how she makes her clients look, she needs to reconsider her job,’ she says with a sneer. ‘And for goodness’ sake, learn to remove your make-up properly before you go to bed, it’s terrible for your skin and you have enough problems in that department.’
‘Yes, Aunt Ebony.’ I touch my nose defensively. I know my oily T-zone never really grew out of the adolescent years, but someone pointing it out does nothing to make melessself-conscious of it.
I fake a yawn to further demonstrate the ‘just fallen out of bed’ act.
‘Oh, do stop that, Sadie. If anyone has a right to be tired, it’s me. I’ve been travelling forhours, and coming here is another delay I didn’t need tonight. I want to go home for a hot shower to wash theairplaneoff me and to sleep in my own bed, so stop dawdling.’
I trot after her obediently as she goes over to the counter and throws papers down on it. I rifle through them, trying to make head or tail of them, and then look up helplessly, waiting for her to explain.
She clicks her tongue, annoyed that I can’t magically divine what the sketches are. She turns the drawing around so it’s the right way up. ‘This is what that Finnish reality star has ordered from us.’
‘That? Whatisthat? Why does it have… tentacles?’ It looks as if you’d need to be a spider to get it on and I debate turning the sketch around again – it looked better upside down. ‘That’s not clothing, that’s lingerie. It belongs in the bedroom on a saucy weekend away with an eight-armed spouse, by the looks of it. There are plenty of lingerie shops that can provide your Finnish friend with that – I’m not making it. It’s two nipple covers and a gusset.’
‘Joined by plenty of see-through black fishnet, which we have in the store room.’
‘The store room is my flat.’
‘Which is exactly why I don’t charge you much rent on it.’ She pats my cheek. ‘By Wednesday, please, I need to get it shipped to Finland by Saturday.’
‘Wednesday! Ebony, I can’t, I’ve got three bridesmaid dresses and a mother-of-the-bride outfit to match a wedding dress and they’re coming in for the fitting on Tues—’
‘Well, you’d better get on with it rather than making such a fuss, hadn’t you?’
