Page 67 of A Wonderland Wish on Ever After Street
The others all do a collective ‘awwww’, and I’m grinning so widely as I clink my teacup against Bram’s and we both take a sip. He leans his head back on my shoulder, and I sink down a bit lower to make him more comfortable.
The butterflies turn into small, flying, fire-breathing dragons at the thought of being responsible for employees now too. I don’t know much about running a business and now I’vegotto earn enough of an income to cover the rentandpay other people too. And how can I ever be Bram’s boss? He’s un-boss-able. And surely I’ll need to take on someone else as well. We’ve had plenty of times where the tearoom has been too busy for the two of us to keep up with. ‘At least I can fire employees too now, and the first thing I’m going to do is fire Tabby.’
‘She’s hilarious,’ Marnie says. ‘I don’t think she’s ever evenseenAlice, never mind read the book. She only seems to know one line –off with their heads!’
‘She might not be a fan of readingorAlice, but at least with her gone, we’ll know there will be no more sabotage incidents.’
Everyone sits forwards in anticipation of gossip,and I tell them about the salted muffins and spicy brownies that, contrary to popular belief, havenotbeen caused by gremlins. ‘None of you know for sure if she was offered the tearoom before me, do you?’
‘Offered the tearoom…?’ Lissa asks in confusion.
I explain about Tabby’s plans for a wellness retreat on Ever After Street. ‘Mr Hastings apparently gave the tearoom to someone else and then changed his mind and rescinded the offer. Any of you know who that was? I’d like to know I’m firing her for a reason…’
A wave of clueless shrugs and head shakes go around the room. No one seems to know what I’m talking about, but I didn’t really expect them to. It’s the sort of thing Mr Hastings would keep to himself.
And then one voice cuts through the bamboozlement. ‘I thought it was you, Bram.’
Every eye in the room turns to Joshy, who looks surprised by the sudden attention.
‘Didn’tyouleave the carousel to take over the tearoom? Isn’t that why your father hired me?’
‘No, to help me with the tearoom,’ I correct him. Joshy’s young, he’s got his wires crossed…
…But Bram instantly sits up. Rather than lazy and languid, he’s now as stiff as a robot that hasn’t been oiled.
And just seeing him lookthatuneasy sets off a swirling squall of a thunderstorm inside me.
‘Wait, no, that’s not right, is it? On the first day…’ I think back and it gives me a sudden and overwhelming urge to put as much space between me and Bram as possible. I slide along the bench so hard that I nearly fall off the other end as I turn the thoughts over in my head. ‘The first day, you’d already left the carousel. You said your plans had fallen through but they’d hired your replacement, so you were at a loose end… That’s why you were available to play the Mad Hatter…’
I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. He looks around the room before looking at me, but his eyes flick away the second we make eye contact. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever seen Bram lost for words, and it leaves me with the foreboding kind of goosebumps. A haunting chill. The ‘this cannot be happening’ feeling of being in a horror film. It can’t be him. Hecan’thave been lying all along.
‘At the interview, Mrs Willetts asked your father about “something”, and he saiditwouldn’t be a problem. When you handed me your phone on that first morning, he said, “good luck withit”. I thought it was just sarcasm, but it wasn’t, was it? In both instances, he was talking aboutyou.’ I shake my head, trying to clear it, but the thoughts are swirling so loudly that it’s like being inside a spinning washing machine. ‘It can’t be you. Of all the people who could’ve been offered that tearoom, it can’t be you. Tell me it’s not you,please.’
He sits forward and goes to run a hand through his hair, but realises it’s stuck down so slides a hand across it instead and pulls awkwardly at the back of his neck. ‘Any chance we can have this conversation in private?’
In that one simple sentence, he’s given me all the answer I needed. ‘What that means is there’s a conversationtohave. That wasn’t supposed to be your answer. You were supposed to say, “Pfft. What? No, of course not, I left the carousel for some completely different and totally unrelated reason.”Whyaren’t you saying that, Bram?’
‘Cleo…’ He reaches a hand out towards me but it ends up hanging limply in mid-air.
I scramble onto my feet before he can get any closer and start pacing. Except there are so many of our colleagues packed into this room that there’s barely space to move, and ‘pacing’ involves taking two steps between Marnie and Franca and back againbefore I walk into Sadie. It feels like the world is crumbling in on itself, and I’m right back to where I was two years ago. Adrift in a bank, with a business plan and a bank manager who was waiting fortwo. Phoning and phoning my ex, desperately pleading for him to answer, telling the staff that he must’ve been in a car accident on the way because there wasnochance he wasn’t coming. Checking the traffic reports to see if there were roadworks that he could be stuck in, and he’dobviouslyforgotten to charge his phone… And then the slow, seeping realisation that he really wasn’t coming. I always imagined it was like a bride would feel on her wedding day if she was left standing at the altar. And this feels the same. Watching the dream splinter before my eyes. Let down by another man who I’d put my trust in. Theonlyperson I’ve trusted, the only person I’ve let into my life at all in years. All the doubts that Tabby has instilled converge at once overwhelm me.
‘Why don’t we go for a walk?’ Bram’s eyes flick to mine but again, he looks away at the exact moment our eyes meet.
‘I’m not going anywhere until you explain this.’ I fold my arms. I want his explanationnow. Not in ten minutes’ time when he’s had a chance to concoct some reasonable story as we have a pleasant stroll through the castle grounds. Now.
He takes a deep breath and exhales for so long that his lungs must be burning. I see him look around the room and he eventually sighs in resignation. ‘Lilith couldn’t continue because of her health, her family kept the tearoom going for a while but it was temporary, they had their own jobs to get back to, and she eventually reached a deal with the council to buy the building from her. My father had an empty tearoom with no one to run it, so he threw it open to applications, andnonewere suitable. He had thirty applicants, and not one of them was the right fit. I was at his office when he was looking through them, and I took a chance. I was ready to do something different from the carousel, and Ilovebaking, so I took amassive leap of faith and said, “Let me do it.” I thought he’d laugh, but he didn’t. He said yes. I thought he was finally trusting me with something – something big. I thought he was finally treating me as an adult, allowing me a shop of my own. He’s always made fun of my baking, joked that I’d never be any good, it’s not a “manly” enough job, and I felt like he was giving me a chance. He was finally believing in me. The applications hadn’t closed, but he’d given up on finding anyone, so we put the plan into action. He hired Joshy, I started planning what I’d do with the place, and then another application came in, and it bleweverythingout of the water. Everyone had always said there should beAlice in Wonderlandrepresentation on Ever After Street, but nothing had ever come of it. And there you were with your Wonderland Teapot idea – theperfectfit. Exactly what this street needed. That’s all there is to it.’
‘That’s not all there is to it though, is it? You’ve lied to me from the very beginning. You must have resented me. It was going to beyourshop, and then suddenly you were downgraded to workingforme. Washing up, waiting tables. What an insult that must’ve been.’
‘Not at all. Cleo,youwash up.Youtake food to waiting customers. I would’ve been doing that no matter what, just like you do. It makes no difference. People don’t realise how lucky they are to have the ability to do menial jobs. It’s nothing to complain about.’
I’ve always loved his attitude, and I never, ever expected to be questioning whether it was genuine or not, because I’m suddenly doubting every word Bram has ever said. ‘Why did you help me? Why let me use your kitchen? If you wanted to take over the tearoom, you could’ve just left me serving supermarket-bought cakes. I’d have slipped up eventually and been found out.’
‘I didn’t want you to slip up. I wanted what was best for Ever After Street. You had the imagination to come up with everything in that tearoom, but you’d lost your spark. And this wasyour dream. It was an opportunity for me, but it was a lifelong dream for you. I didn’t want to stand in the way of that. Yeah, I was angry at first. He pulled the rug out from under me by going back on what was planned. He offered me the Hatter job as a consolation prize. I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t upset. Disappointed. But I believe in making the best of things. What good does it do to be bitter and resentful? Throwing a tantrum wouldn’t change anything… and I didn’t want it to.Alice in Wonderlandwas inspired. I couldn’t have come up with anything like that. I know I should’ve told you, but I didn’t, and now it’s too late to change that.’
He’s not wrong there, and I appreciate the way he tackles things with head-on candour, but that also makes this even worse. ‘You’re so honest, Bram, about everything. You blurt out whatever you’re thinking, but this… this one major thing, you kept quiet about. I even asked you outright and… you didn’t tell me. Youtoldme you didn’t know anything about it.’ I thought Bram was different. I thought he was the one person in my life who could be relied on to say things as they are, and I can’t get my head around the fact that he isn’t.
He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and his words are muffled through them. ‘I knew what you’d think.’
