Page 46 of A Wonderland Wish on Ever After Street
‘I am a handsome blue and orange bird with awesome eyeliner skills, yes. Thank you for the compliment.’ He takes a bow and then stands back up and winks at me.
‘Surprisingly it was.’ I can’t help smiling as our eyes meet and his mouth tips up lopsidedly, making his dimple dip his left cheek, and making me feel warmer than the spring sunshine heating the back of my neck.
When the last of the cupcakes are gone, Bram goes to collect the cake cases and plates.
‘Is he always like that?’ Imogen whispers to me as I start gathering up empty cups and teapots and loading them onto one of the trays we brought with us.
‘He is.’
‘I don’t know how you put up with it. Every conversation is one-third normal and two-thirds nonsense. It’s like spiralling down a rabbit hole and wondering what the heck he’s going on about.’
I laugh out loud. It’s one of the most accurate descriptions of Bram I’ve heard so far, and it makes me remember how I felt about his unique approach to conversations at first. ‘Surprisingly, you get used to it. You even grow accustomed to it.’
As if he can sense we’re talking about him, he looks over and grins at me and my stomach does that fluttery thing again.
‘Very, very accustomed to, hmm?’ Imogen’s eyes flit between us, and I walk into a table because I’m too busy smiling at him to watch where I’m going.
He’s the personification of Wonderland. Slightly mad, quite nonsensical, and… somewhere you want to go back to again and again.
That afternoon, it’s all going too well… until a customer starts screaming and clawing at his mouth. ‘Hot! Hot! Hot!’
There’s a couple who have come in and ordered sparkly tea; the wife has had a lavender and thyme scone with lemon curd, and the husband has just taken a bite of his Jaffa Cake brownie. He spits it back onto the plate and tries to scrape the remainder off his tongue.
‘Water! Get us some water!’ the wife shouts.
‘Yes, of course!’ I was on the other side of the tearoom chatting aboutAlice in Wonderlandwith a curious customer, and my heart is racing as I dash into the food prep room, grab a jug, and turn the cold tap on.
‘Milk,’ Bram shouts after me, having gone over to find out what’s going on. ‘It’s better at taking heat away.’
I fill another jug with milk and race over with them both, trying to ignore the watchful gazes ofeveryother eye in the tearoom, and of course, it’s busy this afternoon so there are a lot of eyes watching this poor man having a terrible experience with his Jaffa Cake brownie.
The man guzzles milk straight from the jug, his face bright red and sweating, as his wife fans her hand in front of him, trying to cool him down.
It’s happened again, hasn’t it? Someone must have put something hot in the brownies. Bram and I made those brownies last night, and we ate a couple together, and there was nothing spicy about them. Just warm, fudgy, orangey gorgeousness. And after Tabby’s warning the other day, I made sure thatIwas the one who loaded them into cake tins ready to bring in this morning.
The customer is panting, blowing out air through pursed lips, and his wife is mopping sweat from his brow with a napkin. She asks if he’s okay and he nods. My panic recedes. Although I still have an underlying fear that I will one day accidentally kill a customer, todayis not that day.
‘What are you playing at, you idiots?’ The angry man stands up and pokes a finger into Bram’s chest. ‘I could have been killed!’
‘Tad dramatic?’ Bram tries to diffuse the situation with humour, but the man is furious. ‘What if I was allergic? Chilli wasn’t mentioned on the ingredients when it’s clearly the main one!’
‘It’s not supposed to be!’ I edge closer because I’m concerned by how much angrier he could get.
‘This is an accident, I assure you.’ If Bram is disturbed by the man jabbing a finger into his chest, he doesn’t show it. ‘They’re not meant to be spicy in any way. The responsibility is mine alone.’
‘Bram…’ I say, because we made them together.
‘No. I made them. I obviously made a mistake somewhere. I’m very sorry. I’ll ensure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘We made a mistake in coming to this dreadful place! Our feelings will be reflected in a review and a very stern letter to your boss!’ The man has every right to be angry, of course he does, but his level of anger is really quite scary.
‘We will, of course, give you a full refund, and a—’ I was going to offer them a voucher for their next visit, but they look like they’d rather visit the surface of the sun than come here again, so I leave it. The wife gives me her debit card to refund while the man gathers up their shopping bags and stomps out the door, slamming it behind him.
‘Sorry,’ the wife apologises as I hand her card back. ‘It really was a very nice scone.’
Bram hears it too and can’t hold back the giggle. When she leaves, he leans over and whispers to me. ‘My money’s on her being the culprit because she wanted to see him suffer.’
The laugh relieves some of the blinding panic and gives me a moment to take a breath, which I haven’t done since the man’s first screech. When I hold my hands out in front of me, they’re shaking.
