Page 35 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
They walk off chatting about other gruesome rumours of how the viscount might’ve met his demise.
‘God, that dress, Sade.’ Mickey from the Mermaid’s Treasure Trove comes over. ‘I stop and stare in awe every day. The way it catches the light…’
‘Makes me feel like a little girl again,’ Lissa says. ‘If the missing Cinderella doesn’t want it, I’d be happy to display it in the Colours of the Wind museum – a part of our own fairy-tale story.’
‘Everyone deserves to wear a dress like that once in their lives,’ Marnie says without making eye contact with anyone and then scurries back to the bookshop across the street.
‘Thanks for letting us be part of your fairy tale,’ the girl from Christmas Ever After says as she leaves.
Witt stumbles inside the shop as though he can’t get in quick enough while I wish everyone a good week and then close the door behind me. The Cinderella Shop is shut on a Sunday, and although some shopkeepers on Ever After Street choose to stay open, I use the day to catch up on sewing.
‘There’s something about Ever After Street. People here are nicer than people I’ve met before,’ Witt says.
‘We’re all lucky to work here. Weloveour jobs. No one owns a shop here just to make money – they do it because they love seeing kids come along like they’ve found Disneyland on their own doorstep. Job satisfac—’
‘God, I hate this place!’ The door clatters as Ebony storms in. ‘Everything I put down, it goes flaming walkabouts. I looked like a fool out there. They’ll be saying I support the supermarket at this rate. Where is that wretched ticket?’
She starts rifling through the piles of papers on the shelves below the counter, mostly made up of half-hearted order outlines that customers never went through with and my absent-minded dress sketches that I do while I’m manning the counter sometimes.
‘The burning video has got 300 views already and Lissa’s only just uploaded it. I should’ve been part of that, not standing there patting myself down like a numpty.’ She mutters to herself as she hurls papers around. ‘I put that damn thing right here, I know I did.’
‘I threw it out,’ I lie because she’s making such a mess and I know with utmost certainty thatshewon’t be the one tidying it up.
‘Threw it out?’ She screeches so loudly that I’m almost positive one of the papers screws itself up in terror. ‘Why would you do that? You knew we were going to burn them.’
I shrivel under the incredulous look she throws at me. ‘I was tidying up.’
‘Tidying up.’ She tuts, indicating the mass of papers on the under-counter shelving. It looks like it was last tidied up in 1983. ‘You made me look like a fool out there.’
‘Sorry.’ I should’ve kept my mouth shut and denied all knowledge, let her think fairies had spirited it away during the night.
I’m still standing next to Witt and his elbow presses against my upper arm in silent, gentle support, but I daren’t glance up at him to see if he read anything into the missing ticket.
‘Tidy up this mess.’ She slaps the counter, sending the papers she’s strewn scattering even further. ‘I don’t have time for this nonsense today.’
‘You’re not going somewhere again, are you?’
‘I’m going on a cruise with a social media influencer. I’ve got to be in Southampton tonight; we leave tomorrow morning.’
‘A cruise… with an influencer…’ I repeat, but no matter how many times I try to make sense of that sentence, it doesn’t compute in my brain. ‘How is that going to help?’
‘She asked me to tag along so she can see some of our designs in motion.’ She sounds defensive. ‘I’m taking my entire wardrobe with me. She’s got 1.38 million followers, you know. If she wears our clothing on her socials, it will turn everything around for us.’
‘Ebony, you can’t keep…’
She fixes me with a glare that’s hard enough to cut me off. ‘You sew, and you leave finding clients to me. You know nothing about the world of business and how you have to act with these snooty little madams. We have to play the game. We need to be seen as a brand they’d like to be associated with, and what kind of an impression does it give if we’re suggesting we can’t afford to go on a cruise?’
‘Maybe the impression that wecan’tafford it?’ I’m so exasperated that I’m struggling not to shout. All right, I don’t know what important influencers want or expect, but Idoknow we’re failing with the normal people who walk past every day. Why can’t I just pluck up the courage to say it in a way that would make her understand rather than shut me down? ‘How long will you be gone?’
‘Two we—’
‘Two weeks! How much is a two-week cruise with an influencer going to cost?’
‘Nowhere near as much as the revenue it will bring in when she wears our dresses on her feed. 1.38millionfollowers, Sadie.’
‘But evenifshe agrees, you have no way of knowing how many, if any, of those followers will be even vaguely interestedorhow many of them are likely to be able to afford—’ I stop myself because I’m failing at keeping my voice steady. I want to go over and shake her to make her realise this isn’t the way.
‘Our shop’s motto is exclusivity. We want our clothing to have a certain prestige among our clients, which is exactly why we need influencers on board. On board – hah!’ She laughs at her own joke and then rolls her eyes when I don’t. ‘Lots of celebrities follow her. Harrison Ford follows her, you know.’
