Page 21 of A Wonderland Wish on Ever After Street
‘That sounds remarkably uncomfortable.’ I toe my trainers off and shift them onto the mat beside his yellow boots, and look up at the high ceiling and wide hallway. I instantly see why I had to take them off. We’re in a large hall that’s decorated inshades of cream and white, with gold accents. Under my feet is fluffy cream carpet, the walls are cream and hung with gold-framed prints of geometric shapes that look like placeholder pictures when you buy an empty photo frame.
‘Kitchen’s through here. Although feel free to look around, you won’t find much mischief to get into.’
‘I’m not a mischief type, Bram.’
‘That just means you haven’t met the right people to make mischief with. Everyone’s got a five-year-old child inside just waiting to get out. It can usually be coaxed out with silly string, party poppers, or a pack of crayons.’
I can’t imagine this pristine house has ever had asniffof a party popper, much less a crayon.
I can’t resist peering through the doorless doorways of other rooms we pass. A living room with oversized white leather sofas, grey accents, a cream carpet. A dining room with an imposing mahogany table and eight chairs. A conservatory with arguably more light coming in through its enormous windows than there is outside. They’re all decorated in the same colourless colour scheme – a thousand shades of pale, and everything looks ultra-modern. Bram seems more of a colourful vintage type, but this could be something straight from anIdeal Homebrochure.
‘Tea?’ His voice floats back down the hallway. I’ve dawdled and he’s disappeared.
‘You’re not in work now, you know.’
‘Always time for tea!’ he calls in that cheery Hatter voice and I follow it to find my way. Imagine having such a big house that you have tohuntfor the kitchen. I follow the sound of china clinking and a kettle boiling and come to a large arched doorway that leads into a vast room.
‘Oh my God. Nowthisis a kitchen.’ I intend to look around in awe, but the first thing I see is a large red fire extinguisher, deliberatelyplaced on the marble worktop opposite the doorway. ‘Very funny.’
He laughs without looking up from the kettle he’s pouring. ‘I was trying to rig it up to open the door by itself, but you arrived before I could figure it out. Thought it might make you feel better if you knew where it was.’
The kitchen is as awe-inspiring as the other rooms. The floor tiles are shiny mirror-glazed white, the cupboard doors are white with gold handles, and the work surface around the units must be pure marble, glistening white with flecks of gold sparkling through it. There’s a fridge and a freezer side by side, both taller than me, and an oven with a screen and so many buttons that you can probably earn some sort of engineering degree just by learning to operate it.
The only bit of colour is a large rectangular magnet on the front of the refrigerator with a slogan on it in a rainbow of blocky letters. It reads ‘this kitchen is for dancing’. ‘Is it?’
‘I’m not much of a rules person, but it’s my one and only rule.’
‘I hope it doesn’t apply to me because I can’t dance.’
‘Neither can I. That’s what makes it fun.’
I suppose I should’ve known that. He can’t sing either, and that really, really doesn’t stop him.
‘So what do you think? Can you make use of it?’
‘Bram, it’s…’ I look at him. His hair is the only thing that’s colourful about him tonight, but the kitchen is so astoundingly plain. I’ve never been to any home that was more unfitting of its owner. Bram is bright in every way, but this house has been to Magnolia Town and hit every branch of the cream tree on the way back. Bram is chaotic. Colourful. Lively. Loud. His house is bland, bland, bland. Everything looks so perfectly positioned that I expect it to be superglued in place, like it belongs in a photoshoot. ‘Yeah, of course. The thing is… I make a messwhen I cook.’
‘Messes can be cleaned up,’ he says with a carefree shrug as he places a mug of tea on the unit and nudges it towards me, making the tea swish-swash in the cup and come perilously close to sploshing over the edges.
‘I know, it’s just… you could perform surgery in here, it’s so clinical. Operating theatres aren’t as pristine as this.’
At first, I think he might be offended, but then he grins and says, ‘Oh, sothat’swhat the team of scrubbed-up surgeons were doing here earlier.’
It’s a joke, but I can’t help feeling slightly uneasy that his house is so big, you could genuinely lose a team of surgeons inside it.
‘Have you eaten?’
I had a sandwich this afternoon in work, but nothing since. ‘By the time I’d got home and showered and changed…’
‘Me neither. Would you like a blueberry flower tart that I made last night?’ He’s already crossed the kitchen floor and opened the giant silver fridge, and when I go to protest, my stomach rumbles instead.
He comes back with a cake tin and opens the lid to reveal a beautiful display of tarts. I didn’t know what a blueberry flower tart was, but it’s a normal blueberry tart where the pastry case has been carefully split into petals and cooked in the shape of a flower, decorated with a big swirl of fresh cream and has a blueberry on the top. It’s simple and yet incredibly effective.
They’re small so I take two and he does the same, and it feels like he’s waiting for my verdict when I bite into one, and they taste as good as they look. The tartness of the blueberry filling perfectly balances the sweetness of the sugared cream and the pastry is buttery and melt-in-the-mouth.
The noise I make must convey how good it is because he bites into his own with a look of satisfaction. He seems so quiet tonight,everything about him is a world away from his usual exasperating self.
He invites me into the living room, but given the colour of his carpets and my unrivalled ability for staining light-coloured things, it’s best to stay put with tea and blueberry tarts. He reaches over to pull up a blind, revealing a window that looks out onto the park-like grounds and greenery surrounding his house, and leans on his elbows, looking out.
