I’m about to snap that he’s got that wrong when he whispers, ‘That’s like a country mile, but longer. The Wonderland Teapot blew all the other pitches out of the water. Don’t underestimate that.’
His voice is gentle and kind, and he sounds so genuine that it makes me feel even more choked up.
He’s quiet as we wash and dry. He’s never quiet. In the three days we’ve worked together, he’s shut up for approximately two and a half minutes collectively. If he’s not yakking to customers, then he’s singing out-of-tune songs with misheard lyrics or tapping his feet and clicking his fingers to a beat heard only in his own head, and it means a lot that he understands the need for silence right now.
When the washing and drying is finished and put away, he crosses the kitchen and jumps up to sit on the unit opposite me. He takes his hats off and stands them on the unit, then pushes a hand through his blue hair, scruffing it up, getting rid of the hat hair by making it look like he’s been pulled backwards and forwards through a hedge several times. His brown eyes find mine and his look is one of real concern that softens my heart towards him. ‘What’s the problem? Tell me, please? I can’t help if you don’t tell me. I’d like to think we’re kind of in this together?’ He sounds questioning and unsure, the complete opposite of bright and confident Hatter.
The idea of sharing this burden is a nice one. I can’t tell Marnie, she’s got her own business to run and her own mortgage to pay now she owns the shop, and she’s got Darcy. She’s helping me out enough with giving me somewhere to park my caravan, I can’t burden her with my issues too.
And he knows anyway. Trying to hide it has been unexpectedly exhausting.
He can tell I’m wavering. ‘Is it a time issue? Have you been so busy preparing the shop itself that you haven’t had time to cook anything? Because I get it. We’re open nine to five. And everyone knows that nine means much earlier than nine and five means much later than five. It’s a lot of pressure to work full-time and have a life outside of work, not that I’d know anything about lives outside of work, but to get a shop full of cakes baked, you’d be up most of the night, right?’
‘I… um…’ I twist my fingers together.
‘Is it a skill issue then?’ he asks, and I get the feeling that he can see through me as well as Alice could see through the Looking Glass.
‘I’m kind of…’ I swallow hard, trying to think of a way to put it, ‘…between kitchens at the moment.’
His head tilts to the side. ‘I say a lot of strange things, but I’ve never heard that one before. What does “between kitchens” mean?’
I intend to give a carefully constructed answer, but my mouth moves without my permission. ‘Last time I tried to bake something at home, I accidentally set the kitchen on fire and got myself evicted and now I’m living in a caravan on Marnie’s driveway and the kitchen consists of one tiny work surface and a gas hob that I’m scared to turn on in case it blows up.’
The sentence comes out so fast that it’s all squashed together and jumbled and it takes him a minute to untangle it. ‘You’re homeless?’
‘I’m not homeless. I have a caravan and an address. I have slightly too much money to claim a benefit but not enough to be able to afford rent, and I’m a terrible prospect for landlords. If I can make this a full-time sustainable job, then I’ll be able to rent another flat and get a handle on the baking thing, but I need to get through this three-month trial. If you would just, please, not tell anyone, and—’
‘Get a handle on it? Can you bake at all?’
‘Yes!’ I huff in annoyance, but mainly annoyance that my attempts to be nonchalant are so transparent. ‘All right, no, not… not recently. I used to be able to. A couple of years ago, my ex and I were going to go into business together with a teashop, but it didn’t work out, and between that and the grief, it’s like… I’ve forgotten how. Every time I get near a kitchen, I go blank. I used to throw ingredients in with abandon and somehow they’d work out. My nan always said I had a sixth sense about what flavours went well together, but… I stopped baking, and now, I follow recipes to the letter and they still go wrong. I thought The Wonderland Teapot would unlock whatever part of my soul has gone missing, and I really, really thought it had its own kitchen, but it doesn’t, and I don’t, and…’ I trail off as my voice breaks. I didn’t intend to tell anyone that, but saying it aloud for the first time makes it feel like a weight has gone from my shoulders, and I almost sag against the unit, feeling like I need to catch my breath.
‘What’s wrong with serving supermarket-bought cakes then? There’s no law against it. Hastings and Co. would never know. He’s got the taste buds of a jellyfish.’
‘Because it’s not honest, is it? It’s someone else’s work that I’m pretending is my own.’
‘I’m sure the factory machines will be mortally offended.’
I laugh and then sigh. ‘My mum and nan ran a tearoom together when I was little. It was magical in there… but then she left, when I was ten. My nan took over – both the tearoom and raising me – and I helped out as much as she’d let me. Everything was homemade. Uneven and messy. Rustic would be the polite way of putting it, but everything was made with love. She was like the whole town’s nan. Customers would come in and ask if she had any of a certain type of cake and if she didn’t, she’d tell them to come back in a couple of hours and nip out the back to whip up a batch. I wanted that. I thought there’d be a proper kitchen here and I’d have time and space to get things right, but…’ I throw my hands out to the sides, indicating the units all around me.
‘Plenty of space to prepare food, nowhere to actually cook it.’ He finishes the sentence for me.
‘Both her and my mum taught me everything they knew about baking. I always thought I’d take over their tearoom one day, but… my nan aged. I didn’t know until after she died that it had got too much for her and the shop was drowning in debt. There was no way out but to sell up, and then…’ I shake my head. I already told him too much last night. ‘Cut to now. I thought baking would come back instinctively. Like muscle memory. Second nature because owning a tearoom is in my DNA… but when I heard about Lilith and this place and went back to the kitchen in my flat… the resulting cake ended up being decorated by the foam out of a fireman’s hose.’
‘Never the ideal end to a bake.’
‘And every time since then, it’s just got worse. I don’t want to serve preservative-filled cakes that I’ve unwrapped and slapped some icing on. I want to be authentic. I can do it. I just need to—’
‘Don’t say get through this three-month trial again.’ He cuts me off. ‘That isn’t the answer. You need to concentrate on the here and now. Buying this stuff must cost a fortune. It’s counterproductive because you want money coming in but you’re spending more than you’re earning, and you’re clearly spending most of your days terrified and wound-up about someone finding out, and honestly, Cleo, people are going to find out.’
‘Because you’re going to tell them, of course you are.’
‘N—’
‘You’ve got something to hold over me now. Something you can have a good laugh about, tell all our colleagues so they’ll think less of me.’
He jumps down from the unit and his yellow boots hit the floor with a loud smack. ‘Why do you think I’m that kind of person?’
‘Because that’s what people do. They let you down. They let you come within touching distance of your wish and then rip the rug out from underneath you. They say one thing and then do something different.’
‘The wrong people. Selfish people. I’d like to think I’m not like that.’
‘What are you going to do then?’
‘I’d like to help.’
It’s… unexpected and I struggle to come up with a response. ‘And why would you do that when…’ I start off snappy, but I look up and meet his eyes across the room, kind, genuine, dark but with a sadness in them that catches me off-guard. ‘…when I’ve been nothing but horrible to you?’ I finish the question in a very different way than I intended to.
‘It’s okay, I deserve it,’ he says with a nonchalant shrug. ‘I’m a bit too weird for most people. If they don’t realise it straight away, they do soon enough.’
That gets to me. No one deserves people to be horrible to them. Sure, he’s a little bit out-there, but other than turn up unexpectedly, has he actually done anything to suggest he’s a terrible person? He’s known about the bakes since day one. He could’ve disgraced me publicly with his knowledge but he hasn’t, and in the face of his attentive eyes, I can’t remember what exactly I’m holding against him.
I swallow hard again, for a different reason this time. ‘No one ever said weirdness is a bad thing. Even the most sensible people have weird little souls inside, waiting to get out. I’ve always liked people who are a bit weird. They make me feel better for being a bit weird too.’
‘Well, I wear my weird little soul on my sleeve, and it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. And that’s fine, but I’m not going to change to make other people happy.’
His words have a sense of weariness about them, like this is a conclusion he’s come to after many years of soul-searching and has had to use as justification more than a few times. I try to think of what I know about him. He’s obviously brilliant with children and an incredible magician. He helped Marnie out with the book festival she threw last year by keeping the carousel running for festival attendees, long after it was meant to be closed. He obviously helped Lilith out when she used to run the tearoom too. The carousel is a hugely popular part of Ever After Street and I wouldn’t mind betting that’s a lot to do with him. Even with his normal dark hair, he’s got the upbeat type of personality that draws people to him.
Literally, it seems. I come back to my senses to realise I’ve drifted across the room towards him. I shake my head and take a step backwards so sharply that I catch my hip on the corner of the unit and make myself jump.
