Page 41 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
‘Go!’ Scarlett insists. ‘I’m here and it’s not far off closing time anyway.’
I exchange a look with her, double-checking with my eyes that she’s really okay with being left alone, and she nods. Ever After Street is quiet now and it doesn’t look like we’ll be inundated with the same rush of customers as earlier. ‘Text if it gets busy again. Take measurements, pin darts, and add dresses to the alterations rail if any are needed; I’ll start on them when I get back.’
She makes a shooing motion and I’m fairly sure she’s going to get a broom out and sweep us out of the door soon.
‘Just let me take these upst—’ I go to pick up the books, but Witt’s huge hands clamp on the tower of spines.
‘I’lltake these upstairs; they’re heavy.’
‘Aww, and he insists he’snotPrince Charming,’ Scarlett says to me as I reluctantly let Witt take them and lead the way out the door.
I unlock the side door, hold it open for him, and then rush up the narrow stairway to let us into my cramped flat. There’s what was once a kitchen table covered in fabric, which I sweep aside to give him a space to put the books down when he ducks into the room behind me.
If I’d known a gorgeous guy was coming into my flat, I’d have made an effort to clean up.
He stretches his back out, grunting as he stands up to full height and looks around. ‘This is… cosy.’
He has such a nice way of putting things. Instead of heading straight back out the door, he invites himself into the living room, where my mum’s old Singer machine lives, along with many half-finished dresses and reams of fabric, both my own and the shop’s excess stock, and rails of dresses in garment bags, finished but without a home.
‘Okay, you’ve seen enough now, off we go.’ I try to keep it light-hearted, but it’s cramped and stuffed, and he’s staying in a castle that’s got huge rooms and valuable antiques and luxury at every turn, and I’m embarrassed by my living quarters.
The kitchen and living room are open plan, which is a nice way of saying one merges into the other with no distinction, and it’s jam-packed enough to make even the bravest of people feel claustrophobic, and the hallway towards the bathroom is lined by rails of returned dresses that have spilled over from downstairs.
‘Is this a flat or a store room?’
Honestly, I’m not sure sometimes either. ‘It’s a flat, but downstairs is full so things have gradually migrated up here. I guess it’s a store room but Ebony lets me live here. It’s convenient for work, and I have everything I need on hand.’
‘Or, onhead.’ As he stands up, he clonks his head on one of the racks of fabric rolls that are attached to the living room wall, a throwback to the times when it actually was a store room.
It really is a tight squeeze. There’s fabric everywhere, dress forms in various states of undress, boxes of unused accessories from the shop, and a couple of carts with trays of sewing supplies in them.
He bends over the table to have a look at the old Singer machine that works with a hand crank rather than electricity. ‘This is an antique.’
‘I know. Don’t laugh.’
‘I wasn’t going to laugh. It’s beautiful. I’m a property historian, Sade, I appreciate things the way they used to be, not as they are now.’
‘It was my mum’s. It’s not big and flashy enough to be used professionally – the one downstairs has got all the bells and whistles – but this is… I don’t know. Everything my mum ever made, she sewed on this old thing. It was a present fromherparents and she used it until the day she died.’
‘It’s where the magic happens?’
I nod, even though he sounds genuine and not as if he’s humouring me.
He walks between mannequins and traces long fingers across rails, unzipping one of many garment bags to peer inside. The dresses I make up here are much more demure than the ones downstairs. Less floofy and princessy, and more elegant and suitable for normal occasions rather than fairy-tale balls.
‘This is what you do,’ he says simply. ‘These are the kind of dresses you’d sell if it wasn’t for Ebony’s input?’
‘She doesn’t know any of this is here. She doesn’t know I make things that aren’t for the shop, at least not now.’
‘Who are they for?’ He zips up the garment bag and unzips another.
‘I don’t know. No one. Anyone. Stock for when I take over one day…’ I trail off because it seems increasingly unlikely, especially given that I’m now solely responsible for breaking one of Ebony’s cardinal rules. No matter how much of a success it is, when she gets back, she isnotgoing to fall at my feet and praise my inventiveness in selling off the second chance dresses, and it’s going to be nigh-on impossible to convince her otherwise.
‘You know how beautiful these are, don’t you?’
I shake my head. ‘It’s just playing. Using up offcuts of fabric. Filling my time when I can’t sleep and it’s more productive than counting sheep.’
He stops and looks through to the bedroom for a moment, which is a little sanctuary in the crazy flat, and nods.
