Page 10 of A Wonderland Wish on Ever After Street
He kneels down again. ‘Oh no, wait, I can see exactly where it’s gone.’ He reaches behind the boy’s head and extracts the cake, seemingly from behind his ear. A trick as old as time, but usually completed with a fifty-pence piece rather than baked goods. ‘Now why did you put it behind there?’
The boy clutches his fingers for it, and Bram goes to hand it to him and then pulls it away again. ‘Maybe the cake doesn’t want to be eaten! Maybe it’s going to disappear again!’ He waves a hand between the cake and the boy, and sure enough, the cake disappears. I mean, it doesn’treallydisappear, but I can’t work out wherehe’s stashed it.
The boy gasps in surprise, laughing with glee, his tantrum long forgotten. ‘Again!’
This time Bram does another hand movement and the cake reappears on his palm, and the boy is rigid with sheer delight, and squeals joyfully when Bram waves his hand and makes the cake disappear yet again. I haveneverseen anyone move their hands so fast.
Bram stands up and looks around, like he’s looking for the missing cake, and then he spots it again, and kneels to extract it from behind the boy’s ear again. ‘Now it’s behind the other ear! You’ve got to stop hiding food round there, you know. You’ll have columns of ants following you everywhere you go. Look, here comes one now!’
He points to an invisible something on the floor and when the boy looks, he removes the cake again, twirls around behind him, and replaces it from the other side. Once the cake is safely on the plate in front of him, Bram bows and tips his hats to the family, but the lad is far more interested in Bram himself. The parents invite him to sit, which he does, and makes easy conversation for a few minutes. He takes the stack of hats off and messes his hair up, making it even crazier than it was anyway, and dipping his head to let the curious boy touch his blue hair.
The dad takes a photo of them together, and when they leave, the boy runs back and hugs Bram, and as they walk away, he’s waving all the way down the street until they get out of sight, and Bram waves back from the doorway.
My elbows hurting makes me I realise I’ve been leaning on the counter, mesmerised by the scene in front of me. I can feel my heart melting. I couldn’t have done that. My Alice costume didn’t even register on the young lad’s radar, but Bram captured his imagination from the first moment. He gave him his full undivided attentionand did exactly what was needed to turn his frown upside down.
And Bram kind of… came to life. For someone so colourful, when he was entertaining that little lad, he lit up brighter than a planet in the night sky.
He comes back inside and starts clearing the table without being asked.
‘You’re very good at that.’ It feels like the first nice thing I’ve said to him all morning.
‘Clearing tables?’
‘No.’ I glance at the empty cups and plates he’s loading onto a tray. ‘Well, that too, but I’m not sure that’s much of an acquired skill. What you just did. Doing magic. Entertaining kids.’ He’s done a couple of card tricks for other customers so far this morning, but nothing like that. ‘You knew exactly what that lad needed.’
‘Was that a compliment?’ he asks without looking up.
Usually, when faced with a question like that, my natural instinct is to say something sarcastic and turn it into a joke, but I decide to stand by it. ‘Yes, it was. That little boylovedyou.’
‘Just trying to make someone’s day a bit brighter. If you can make someone smile when they otherwise wouldn’t have smiled then that’s a day well spent. Doesn’t matter if they’re four or eighty-four – everyone needs a smile sometimes.’ It’s his normal voice again. In a few short hours, I’ve noticed the difference between how he speaks when he’s in character and how he speaks when he isn’t.
I didn’t know what to expect with the lunchtime rush, but it starts picking up as we get closer to midday, and there are orders for sandwiches and tea from the menu, and the display case is looking decidedly decimated by the time Marnie stops by in the early afternoon.
‘This place looks amazing,’ she says, even though she’s helped me with decorating and has seen it many timesbefore. ‘I couldn’t help noticing the steady stream of customers coming in all morning too. How’s it—’ She catches sight of Bram when he stands up from where he was crouching to tidy the flamingo croquet area and she gives him a wave. He tips his hat stack to her and she smiles fondly.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d got Bram working here?’ She leans over the counter and whispers to avoid being overheard.
‘I didn’tknowI’d got Bram working here,’ I mutter, trying to cobble together a sandwich for my own lunch but I think I’ve got the ratio of cream cheese to cucumber wrong. Never mind my baking skills, even my sandwich-making skills are threatening to desert me now. ‘Who is he, anyway? Do you know him?’
‘Cleo! He’s the eyelinered magician who operates the carousel!’
‘Oh!That’swhat Mr Hastings meant by someone who already works for them.’ It’s such a Homer Simpson moment that I should have shouted ‘D’oh!’ out loud.
‘Did the eyeliner and magician bit not give it away?’
I glance over at him. ‘I think I was blinded by the blue hair and green jacket.’
‘I can’t believe you two are working together. He was born to play the Mad Hatter. You’ll love him. He’s a spectacular nut.’
I can’t help laughing at the description. Despite having only met him this morning, it seems accurate.
‘Anyway, I can’t stop. Darcy’s running his “gardening for mental wellbeing” class at the castle and I’ve left Mrs Potts on her own, and honestly, cats are terrible bookshop assistants. She’d sell books in exchange for Dreamies.’ She points to a salted caramel cupcake in the display unit. ‘I can’t leave without trying one of those though.’
I use the tongs to get one out and she grabs it before I’ve had a chance to put it on one of the spiral patterned napkins that are stacked under the counter.
‘Oh my God,’ she says with a mouthful. ‘That’s gorgeous.Howdid you go from that chocolate thing you forced me into tasting the other night to being able to bake things like this?’
‘That was bad luck,’ I mumble. My cheeks have flared red. Even to Marnie, I haven’t admitted that I’m stocking the tearoom with definitelynothome-baked goods, and there’s no way Bram hasn’t overheard this conversation.
