Page 42 of An Enchanted Moment on Ever After Street
‘Well, tell you what, you call the police, tell them your very handsome and very charming boyfriend has just surprised youwith a very fancy dinner and excruciatingly expensive wine, and let’s see if they make it the crime of the decade and blue-light it all the way here to escort me from the premises, hmm?’ He makes the toddler-esque noise of a police siren. ‘Stop being so ridiculously silly, Marnie. Sit down and have a glass of wine to loosen-bloody-up.’
I re-fold my arms and tap my foot in annoyance, staying glued to the doorstep. My heart is beating faster and not in the good way. Rick is just being his typical overbearing self, but I’m alone with someone who won’t leave. I have no control over this situation. I can’t physically push him away and throw him out the gate, I can’t call the police and ask them to remove him because it’s not a crime, and he won’t listen when I tell him to go.
My mumwouldhave thought a romantic Parisian garden picnic was the act of the world’s most perfect boyfriend, but I also feel vulnerable and unsafe and like he’s trying to manipulate me by bringing her up in the first place, and she would’ve told me to get far away from anyone who makes me feel like that. Even if it meant poking him in the eye with one of his snails.
Violence aside, I catch sight of the kitchen light I left on upstairs. ‘You know what, I was in the middle of something, excuse me a minute.’
I go inside and back up the stairs, glad of the excuse to get away from him. I lean my forehead on the kitchen wall and take a few calming breaths, trying to stop the fight-or-flight rush of adrenaline coursing through me.
‘Are you okay?’ Darcy’s voice comes through the wall. ‘I was about to come round and saw there’d been an invasion of something a lot more unwelcome than Japanese knotweed this time.’
He’s not wrong there.
‘Want me to come and get rid of him?’ There’s the sound of his hands smacking together. ‘I can be quite scary, so I’m told.’
‘You? Scary? Never,’ I say with a laugh. I’m touched by his offer, but the last thing I want is Rick knowing anything about my relationship… friendship… whatever it is with Darcy, and any confrontation between Darcy and Rick seems like a situation that could quickly get out of control. ‘No, thank you. I’m not going back out there; he’ll get bored eventually.’
I peer out the window. Rick has got lettuce leaves hanging out of his mouth while he chews through them with two front teeth like a rabbit, and I make an all-too-familiar noise of frustration. ‘I had things to do tonight.Wehad things to do tonight. I haven’t talked to you all day, I miss—’ I stop myself. I can’tmisshim just because I haven’t talked to him since last night. The highlight of every day lately has been seeing Darcy in the evenings, and I don’t want Rick to take that away.
‘Do you want to go for a walk?’ he says after a moment of silence.
‘A walk?’ I say it like I’ve never heard the word before. ‘With… you?’
‘Y-yeah.’ He sounds unsure, and like he might be recalibrating this as the worst idea he’s ever had. ‘It’s a gorgeous evening and I’ve been wanting to show you the castle gardens. Do you want to walk up there with me?’
‘I’d love to,’ I say instantly, because it sounds like he could change his mind at any second. I’ve never seen Darcy outside of our gardens or my shop. I know he flits back and forth between here and the castle, but he always seems to take hidden shortcuts through the forest, because on the rare occasions that anyone sees him coming and going, it’s always the briefest flash as he disappears into the distance.
‘Okay. Good. I think.’ I can hear the trepidation in his voice. ‘Bring Mrs Potts. I’ll carry her if she gets tired. Meet you out front in five minutes?’
Aww. One thing they never teach you in Disney movies – you can identify a real gentleman not with fancy bottles of wine and expensive dinners, but if he offers to carry your elderly cat should the need arise.
I bribe Mrs Potts from her window seat with Dreamies and strap her harness and lead on, and have one final glance out the window to where Rick is now poking snails into his mouth and has started downing my glass of wine as well as his own. He won’t even notice I’ve gone.
I lock up behind me and take a breath. Itisa beautiful autumn day. The early evening sun is low in the sky, and there’s a warm breeze that sends yellow leaves falling from the trees on Ever After Street, and I hadn’t realised how much I’d come to appreciate the regular hit of fresh air or how much I’d miss our nightly garden routine.
Within moments, Darcy emerges from his shop in his usual disguise. He’s wearing black boots that come up to mid-calf with his jeans tucked into them, a dark jacket, and his usual cap, scarf, and sunglasses, and I can’t help the spike of disappointment that he still feels like he needs them.
‘Hi.’ There’s a moment of awkwardness where he goes to greet me and I’m not sure if he’s going to hug me or not, and for one split second, I think he’s going to lean in and kiss my cheek, and I almost headbutt him in the chest when he bends down to stroke Mrs Potts instead.
He holds a hand out, inviting me to start walking, and I jiggle Mrs Potts’ lead to get her to walk along too. It might be unusual to see a cat on a lead, but she’s used to it from walking to work with me every day. She keeps looking behind her to check Darcy is coming too and only trots on happily when he makes reassuring noises, and I’m once again struck by how much she likes him, and vice versa.
‘Don’t usually see you out and about on Ever After Street,’ I say casually as we wander past Mickey’s Mermaid’s Treasure Trove shop, full of antiques and curiosities and ocean-themed decorative bits, and then take a shortcut between Mickey’s outside wall and the Neverland Sweet Shop and onto the narrow path that cuts through the wooded area behind the shops on this side of the street.
‘Don’t usually go out and about on Ever After Street.’ He sounds like he wants to be more annoyed about it than he actually is, although once we’re off the main street and have the privacy of the trees, the tension that was squaring his shoulders visibly disappears. ‘Speaking of, whyareyou out walking with me when there’s bottle of wine in your garden that looked like it cost more than a monthly electricity bill? I take it you didn’t tell Rick you were leaving?’
‘Where would be the fun in that? Let him marinate in his snails and eye-wateringly expensive wine. He’s like one of those scam callers. You engage them for a little while, then leave the phone on the table and go to make a cup of tea while they carry on talking – at least if they’re trying it on with you, they aren’t pestering anyone else in that time. They want to waste my time, so I enjoy wasting theirs instead.’
Darcy laughs like he isn’t sure whether he should laugh or not. ‘You’re comparing your ex to a scam caller?’
‘He’s similarly annoying and similarly dangerous in that you don’t know what he’s going to do with your personal information. The only difference is that Rick’s got enough money of his own that he doesn’t want mine, unlike the bloke who phones up claiming your internet is about to be cut off or offering you a free grant for solar panels or loft insulation. So thank you for being a dashing hero and rescuing me tonight.’
His laugh is as sarcastic as his tone. ‘Something I’ll never be.’
I don’t know if he means the ‘dashing’ part or the ‘hero’ part, but I glance up at him, trying not to make it obvious how desperate I am to knoweverythingabout him… Probably as desperate as he isnotto share.
I reach out because I want to playfully poke him or something, anything for a moment of touch, but I end up just holding my hand out until the backs of my fingers brush against the sleeve of his jacket and hover there for a moment. He looks down and his other hand reaches over, the backs of his fingers touching mine for a moment before he drops his hand, clears his throat, and looks away sharply.
‘Have you always been a gardener?’ I ask, trying to cover the awkwardness.
