Page 49 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museu
‘Warren!’
‘Sorry, what?’ He turns around to her and I notice how red his face has gone.
‘Are you having fun?’ she repeats.
‘Oh, yes, thank you, yes.’ It’s a strangely curtailed answer, and he looks wildly embarrassed, and it makes me think again about how much he’s struggling to keep up tonight.
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise you were talking to me.’ He adds it as an afterthought and the whole exchange makes him hunch over the counter, like he’s trying to make himself smaller, especially when everyone else has turned to look at him too, and something sparks in my mind, a realisation that remains frustratingly just out of reach.
‘Who’s got the nicest handwriting to write the little boy’s name on this teddy bear’s collar tag?’ Ali asks. ‘My handwriting’s terrible and I don’t want to mess it up.’
‘Warren’s really artistic,’ I say, glad of the opportunity to let the others see there’s more to him.
He’s blushing as he glances at me and then turns back to Ali to take the pen and the plastic tag and Ali murmurs the little boy’s name to put on it.
I go back to holding my finger on the ribbon around Mickey’s box so she can tie it in a neat bow, and don’t think anything more of it until Ali snaps, ‘For goodness’ sake, Warren, didn’t you hear me? I said Jaden, not Aiden! We’ve only got one of those and now it’s ruined!’
For one moment, the world freezes, and I instantly know what Warren’s been trying to hide all these weeks.
With one comment, Ali has blown open what I’ve been trying to put my finger on and never quite getting there.
Everything that didn’t add up suddenly makes perfect sense.
It’s why he’s struggling so much tonight. There are too many people, all talking at once, interrupting and talking over each other, saying things to him when he can’t see their faces. He didn’t ignore Franca just now – he didn’thearthe question.
He doesn’t watch my lips when I’m talking because he’s got a weird lip fetish, but because he’slip-reading.
The little girl I accused him of ignoring, and how oddly upset he seemed by it at the time. I thought it was because I’d called him out for being rude, but it wasn’t, was it? He didn’t ignore her – he didn’thearher. He probably didn’t even know that a little girlhadtried to talk to him.
The inexplicable changing of sides on the night of the stakeout. And the way he moves so he’s facing people. He’s always got to be opposite someone talking to him. Front-on, never sideways. The way he leans in when someone’s speaking, turns slightly to his right. I’d noticed it but I’d never realised it was anything more than a quirky little habit.
Even the phone call the other day.I literally cannot do this, as you well know. I wondered what it was he couldn’t do and what the other person was supposed to know, and this is the answer. He never takes phone calls because hehasto see someone’s mouth moving to catch what they’re saying.
The number of times I’ve mentioned the instrumental music playing in the lobby and he’s given a brush-off or an empty agreement and I’ve half-wondered if he even knew what I was talking about.
‘Liss?’ Mickey clicks her fingers in front of my face and her tone sounds like it’s the tenth time she’s said it. She’s tied my finger into the ribbon when I didn’t move it from the box in time, and I hadn’t even noticed.
I pull it free and look around. ‘Where did Warren go?’
‘Did you not see him stomp upstairs in a sulk?’ Bram asks. ‘He’s a weird one, isn’t he?’
‘I think it might be more complicated than any of us imagine…’ I murmur, unable to get my mind off what I suddenly understand. I don’t know why someone would go to such great lengths to disguise having an issue with hearing, but there’s something going on there, and it must be a touchy subject, otherwise he would’ve been open about it. He obviously doesn’t want anyone to know, and Ali’s just unintentionally put it in a very public space, even though it doesn’t seem like anyone else has made the same connection that I have.
‘I don’t trust him, Liss,’ Mickey says gently. ‘He’s hiding something.’
‘I think it might not be what you think it is. I’m going to…’ I point upwards. I was going to say ‘make sure he’s okay’ but whatever his reasons for hiding this are, I don’t want to openly suggest that heisn’tokay, so I finish lamely with, ‘…bathroom.’
When I get up to the kitchen on the third floor, Warren is standing at the table with cardboard laid out in front of him and a pair of scissors in hand. ‘What are you doing?’
He jumps at the unintentional volume of my voice, but now I know he’s struggling to hear, it came out louder than intended.
‘Oh, good, it’s just you.’ He lets out a sigh of relief and holds up a star-shaped piece of cardboard that he’s cut out. ‘Trying to make a new tag for the bear. Cardboard isn’t ideal but I messed up.’
There are so many things I could say, but like an out-of-body experience, I walk across the room, take the scissors out of his hand and drop them on the table, and pull him into a tight, tight hug.
‘What the—’ He chokes off the protest when I squeeze him tighter, and after a few moments, his arms slide around me and pull me against him and, breath by breath, some of the tension starts to seep from his body as he breathes into it.
It’s not the first time we’ve hugged, but itisthe first time we’ve hugged without a computer chair between us, and I let myself get lost in his arms and in the luxury of his leather-scented cologne.
