Page 31 of A Wonderland Wish on Ever After Street
We both seem uncertain of how to say goodbye tonight, like we’ve passed some invisible border of friendship by being so open with each other. It feels wrong to just wave goodbye and walk away like I would any other night.
He seems as though he needs a hug. His hand touches my hip like he doesn’t know where else to put it, and I reach up and slip the arm not holding the cookies around his neck and awkwardly pull him down. Even though the position is uncomfortable, I feel him exhale and relax, and I can’t see his face, but I imagine his eyes slip closed.
It doesn’t last anywhere near long enough. Within a few seconds, he’s stood back upright and extracted his arm from around me and taken a step as far away as the narrow doorway will allow, and I try to ignore the urge to cling on a bit longer.He gives incredible hugs, but it’s notjustthe hug that’s making me feel warm and squishy inside tonight.
‘So, see you tomorrow, then?’ I paste on a smile and step out onto the top step, because if I stand here much longer, I’m likely to hug him again, and that would be a very bad thing.
‘With out-of-tune bells on.’
It makes me laugh because I wouldn’t have it any other way now, and I wave as I head down the steps.
‘Cleo?’ he says as I reach the bottom. ‘Why didn’t you ask me who he is?’
His father. Someone important. Someone with influence. Someone who can afford a house like this. Someone famous, maybe? It never even crossed my mind to question it any further. If Bram wanted to tell me, he would have. ‘I don’t care who he is. Whoyouare is what’s important.’
The smile that crosses his face looks like he couldn’tnotsmile if he tried, but his eyes flicker downwards and then he turns serious again. ‘I might have to hold you to that one day.’
‘You have my word. You’ll always be more important than whoever your father is. He sounds like an inflated walking ego with excruciatingly bad taste in décor.’
I can hear his laugh as I crunch across the gravel to my car and he stays leaning against the doorframe as I get in and start up. I meet his eyes across the distance and smile to myself, trying not to look at how the light from the outside lamps catches the blue pigments in his hair and make it look like it’s glowing.
The Mad Hatter might be a spectacular nut, but Bram might just be something spectacular.
10
‘There’s no such thing as a secret ingredient, only an ingredient that hasn’t been remembered yet.’
‘Well, being both secretandforgotten doesn’t bode well, does it?’ We’re in Bram’s kitchen again and I’m trying to make scones in the vague hope of themnotturning out like small lumps of boulder clay this time. ‘My nan was famous for her lavender scones. She would put a chalkboard outside and write the time they were due out of the oven on it, and people used to queue up to get them while they were so hot that the butter would start to melt as you put it on… She always swore there was a secret ingredient that must never be written down in case someone found out our family secrets.’
‘Tearoom espionage,’ he says with a grin. ‘That must’ve been some scone.’
‘I watched my nan make them so many times. I’ve tried to recreate them, but it was like eating a greenhouse. A soapy-tasting greenhouse. And that was my most successful attempt, others have been worse.’
He laughs from where he’s sitting on the unit, clearly not realising just howbadmy attempts at baking have been in recent years.
‘It tasted like cloves, but I’ve tried it with cloves and it was just…’ I shudder at the memory. I feel like I’ve let down my family name, and I’m definitely letting down my own tearoom.
I’m not intending to make my nan’s scones tonight because I can’t remember that missing ingredient. These will just be plain ones, that hopefully won’t go wrong with Bram’s supervision. The other day, I made the mistake of trying one of the supermarket-bought scones I’ve been serving and they really do taste like they come from a supermarket, and The Wonderland Teapot deserves better than that.
I keep thinking I’ll remember it. But even with the ingredients set out in front of me and my fingers literally in the mixing bowl, rubbing the butter into the flour, my mind isstillblank. I remember Nan telling me to add a pinch of something, but no more than a pinch otherwise it would be overpowering. But… what was it? I wrack my brain, getting increasingly annoyed with myself. This isridiculous.
I didn’t realise I’d made a noise of frustration until Bram speaks. ‘I think you’re too worried that you might not remember and your brain is putting up a mental wall. When you’re tryingsohard to remember something, the harder it gets to remember it.’
I’m not sure if that makes sense or if it’s one of his nonsense ramblings, but he jumps down and holds a hand out to me. ‘Come here.’
‘What are you doing?’
He points to the magnet on his fridge and does a little boogie on the spot, and then steps closer, wiggling his fingers to encourage me to take his hand. I hold mine up above the bowl, my fingers coated in butter, which has made the flour stick all over my hands.
He shakes his head, not accepting my excuse, so I hold my flour-coated hand out to call his bluff, and I’m surprised when he slips his clean fingers around the floury mess of my hand.
He pulls me closer and grasps my other hand with his too, and starts leading us through some demented version of a waltz, exceptno onehas ever done a waltz like this before.
‘You’re going to be covered in flour.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Everythingis going to be covered in flour!’ With every step, flour is dislodging itself from my fingers and making a new life for itself on the floor.
