Page 69 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museu
‘I believe this is yours.’ I bend to get the broken camera from under the counter and slam it onto the wooden desk as he comes over, and I realise I’mwishinghe’d say, ‘Wait, what, I’ve never seen that before in my life, what is that?’
‘I expected it to be in more pieces than that.’ He picks it up and leans over the desk until he can drop it into the bin that he knows is underneath. ‘I can explain.’
‘No, you can’t.’ I involuntarily take a step backwards at the unexpected closeness of him leaning so far over the desk. ‘ButIcan explain it to you, and you jump in and tell me if I’ve got it wrong, how’s that?’
My discomfort must show because he immediately takes a step away again. His bottom teeth pull his upper lip into his mouth and he nods mutely.
‘I think Berrington Developments were worried about the public support for the museum. I think they talk the big talk, but in reality, they knew there’d be backlash they wanted to avoid, and they sent you here for insider information. You were supposed to find out about the inner workings of the museum to see what they could exploit and feed it back to them, and you certainly did.’
‘No, that’s wrong.’ He sighs. ‘The camera was my misplaced idea. It was personal. I got involved in the living exhibits. I wanted to prove who was behind it. It had nothing to do with them or my job here.’
‘If that was true, you would have told me. You would have, at the very least, asked permission to put up the camera. It’s illegal to film people without their consent in a private place. It breaks all sorts of privacy and data protection laws. You must’ve known that.’
‘It only ever filmed at night. It was motion-activated between 7p.m. and 7a.m., so it only recorded when something moved between those hours. You and I had usually gone by then. I… didn’t think of it in those terms. I was just trying to catch out whoever was doing it.’
‘By illegally filming them without their consent?’ I was trying not to lose my cool, but I snap at him this time, even though the fact it only filmed at night makes me feel better.
Alothas happened between us in this lobby and I felt sordid and violated by the idea of a group of lecherous old property developers sitting around and watchingsomeof those things, and I frantically run through anything else they might have seen at night.
‘They were breaking into a building that my company owns!’
‘They were trying to help me! Which is more than you’ve ever done!’
‘And you were lying to me! I knew you knew who was responsible. You’re a terrible liar. When you said no one else had a key, I knew that someone did. The camera was personal curiosity to prove my own theory.’
‘You think that’s an insult, but I’d prefer to be a terrible liar than a seasoned pro like you.’
‘I didn’t lie.’
‘And yet you’re lying now. Because the footage from this “personal curiosity” of yours ends up being used in the most public way to deal us the most damning amount of harm possible. Please, Warren, don’t insult me further by pretending that installing a hidden camera and violating our privacy on behalf of your company was somehow above board and an absolutely fine thing for you to do.’
He pushes a hand through his hair, pacing in small widths of the lobby, covering no more than a few black and white squares of the flooring before turning back the other way again. ‘I didn’t give them that footage. It uploaded automatically to my cloud account and they had access, which I didn’t know. I didn’t know, Liss. I really didn’t know.’
I hate how much that makes me feel just the tiniest bit better. He looks absolutely wretched as he says it, and there’s the smallest smidge of relief that maybe it wasn’t all as calculated as I thought. ‘You knew what they were going to do with it though?’
‘I found out yesterday from my mother.’
‘And what, your quick disappearing act was because you went to help? Went to ensure they had the best footage possible?’
‘I went back to the office to try and stop them, but I couldn’t. The order came from the boss, I didn’t have the authority to override it. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, that’s a nice way of trying to shirk responsibility for this, but nothing you say makes any sense. On the night we stayed here for the stakeout, for example. That camera was already up. You already knew. So what was the point in that?’
‘I was trying to catch you out. I knew that either you’d warn the others and nothing would happen, or you’d sneak something out. I was quite impressed that you managed to get an entire carpet out of the bathroom window.’
‘Are you seriously trying to make a joke of this?’
‘No. I’ve messed up, I know that. I’m trying to figure out a way to sufficiently apologise but there isn’t one, and I’m floundering.’
If nothing else, I appreciate his candidness in this situation, even if it would have been even more welcome in other situations. ‘But we got closer after that. At any point, you could have removed the camera or, at the very least, told me it was up there. You could have told me you knew the truth about who was doing it. Because I knew you knew too, and I thought it was because you were emotionally invested enough to have worked it out for yourself, not because you were voyeuristically watching us every night!’
‘It was never like that. That makes it sound seedy and sleazy. I honestly didn’t think of it from a privacy point of view. I justlikedseeing the creativity when you lot put your minds together. Every morning, I’d walk down Ever After Street and feel like a kid at Christmas, excited by the possibilities of what you’d come up with next. If you knew I knew, you’d stop, and I could see how much good it was doing for the museum and I didn’t want you to stop.’
‘Oh, right, because you’veevercared about the museum?’
‘You know that’s not true.’ A look passes over his face and he looks utterly crestfallen.
‘Do I?’ I snap, even though I do, really. There’s no way he’s been acting all this time. He genuinelylovedit. I do know that, even though it’s a hard belief to cling onto in the midst of everything else.
