Page 48 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museu
The warm feeling is quickly replaced when Ali jabs the pen he’s holding towards Warren and wields it threateningly. ‘And if you eventhinkof doing anything to this museum and destroying the magic of that wishing well, we will hunt you down and torture you untilyouronly wish is that you were dead so the pain would end.’
‘Oh. That’s… um… quite violent. A bit scary.’ He reaches over and gently pushes Ali’s pen away from his jugular and gulps loudly. ‘I’m doing the best I can.’
‘Make it better!’ Mickey turns around to snap at him. ‘If you evict my best friend from this place, or are inanyway responsible for her having to leave it, we will fight your cinema complex every step of the way and sabotage it at every chance we get. You’ll regret the day you ever set foot on Ever After Street!’
I’m feeling warm all over and touched by their impassioned protectiveness of me, and also a little uneasy because I thought tonight would be a good time for them to get to know Warren, not for threats of quite so much violence and channelling Liam Neeson’s famousTakenspeech.
‘I think Warren likes this place more than he expected to,’ I say, because I feel bad that no one’s even giving him half a chance. ‘Ever After Street has a way of getting under your skin. We all know that.’
‘Joking aside,’ Warren says with his hand on his throat, sounding hopeful that it reallyisa joke, ‘this is amazingly fun. Thank you for letting me be part of it. Since I came here, it’s been eye-opening to have an insight into how kids see the world, how they’re always so hopeful and believe in things like wishing wells, and fairytales, and magic. Makes me wish I had a childhood like that.’
‘It’s never too late,’ Ali says to him.
‘Where have I heard that before?’ Warren’s tone is soft and fond as he looks over his shoulder to catch my eyes again, and only looks away when he spots that Marnie, Cleo, and Franca are all watching us.
Mickey kicks my foot under the table we’re sharing and waggles her eyebrows.
‘Soooo, what are we getting Sadie and Witt for a wedding gift?’ Marnie says, sounding like she’s deliberately steering the topic towards the wedding and I have an instant premonition of exactly where this is going. ‘Should we all go in on something together?’
There’s a chorus of agreements, but no one makes any suggestions. It’s like they all get that the point of this conversation has nothing to do with a wedding gift and everything to do with the look they’ve just clocked between me and Warren.
Taking up the baton from his other half, Darcy says, ‘Are youstilldesperately searching for that plus one, Lissa?’
He puts such an emphasis on it that the word sounds like it’s in capital letters, like I’ve been spending my every waking moment since the wedding invitation frantically hunting for a mythical plus one, and not had anything else like museum takeovers and escaping exhibits to worry about.
I’ve always liked Darcy, he’s the castle gardener and owner of the florist shop next door to Marnie’s bookshop, and her partner of over two years now, but that sentence makes it sound like they collaborated to get onto this topic.
‘I don’t need a plus one. It’s not compulsory.’ I can’t help glancing at Warren. Any discussion of my love life should be banned in front of people I fancy, or actually, banned completely, regardless of who’s listening in. I can’t help thinking he looks uneasy. He’s following the conversation back and forth, like a tennis match, but he’s looking at the wrong person when someone else is speaking, and he looks like he’sfightingto keep up.
Although maybe that’s a good thing with this particular discussion.
We’ve all worked together for years and get used to when to let each other talk and when to make our own voices heard, but I can imagine it would be alotfor someone who isn’t used to it, especially as it’s after-hours now and the professional masks that we hold up in front of customers slip and we can be ourselves amongst friends. There’s constant chatter about how our days have gone, and everyone moans about difficult customers or things that happened this week or Mr Hastings’s latest antics, or the most favoured topic of conversation lately, my eternal spinster status.
‘I’ve got a mate who’s just broken up with someone,’ Bram offers. ‘He’ll probably be out of rebound territory before the wedding comes around.’
‘A delightful thought, but no, thank you. Can we focus on the wishes and not my love life?’ I’m blushing hard and I canfeelWarren’s eyes on me. I’m embarrassed by the fact that everyone I know is more invested in this than I am, and that they think I needthismuch help in the love department.
‘Surely we could find someone who’d pretend or join you as a platonic date,’ Cleo suggests. ‘No one specified it had to be a romantic plus one. Any mate will do.’
‘Someone who’d pretend out of pity?’ I raise an eyebrow. ‘I don’t want to go to a wedding with someone who feels sorry for me.’
‘Raff’s brother-in-law has got a single colleague. He’s a tad younger than you, but no one would ever know,’ Franca offers.
‘Oh, good. I’m not sure what’s worse – someone who makes me look like I’ve taken mygrandsonto a wedding or the fact that you’ve all been putting feelers out on my behalf. Plus ones are not mandatory. Sadie and Witt are notreallygoing to bar me at the door if I turn up alone.’
‘Listen to this one,’ Warren says loudly, and when I look over at him, he tips his head in my direction, and my heart melts a little bit at his clear attempt to rescue me from this awkward conversation. What he’s doing is so obvious, and the others will undoubtedly notice and read something into it, and I think he realises that and doesn’t mind taking the flak on my behalf. ‘I wish I was an astronaut so I could live on the moon and make friends with an alien. How sweet is that? Does anyone have a little alien we could send her?’
When no one does, he turns to me. ‘Can I keep this and do it tomorrow? I’ll go and buy an alien soft toy or something and send it?’
I nod, pleasantly surprised by his eagerness because that was a wish from the ‘ignore’ pile, and even though I know he loves being privy to children’s wishes, I didn’t expect him to offer to do something so sweet off his own back, and I can’t help the smile as he slips it into his pocket.
As soon as he’s turned away, Mickey kicks my foot under the table again and cups her hands around her mouth and whispers to me, ‘Who is that and what have you done with the evil gerbil with no soul?’
I try to give her my best ‘shut up, everyone’s listening!’ look, but I can feel my face pulsing with redness, and she barely contains a squeal. ‘Pocahontas and John Smith! I told you, you’re showing him how to paint with the colours of the wind! Literally!’
‘Having fun, Warren?’ Franca is boxing up one of her handmade nutcrackers for a child who wished it could be Christmas every day.
He ignores the question. Which, again, is strange because he’s never usually so impolite.
