‘Made it worse. She became obsessed with the wedding and making sure I wouldn’t do anything to embarrass her on the big day. She was ashamed to be marrying me.’ He’s concentrating on cutting the joined two-colour dough into strips. ‘When I realised that, I broke things off. She never understood why. Neither did my family. But why would I want to marry someone who was embarrassed by me? I was only acceptable to her if I wasn’t myself.’
I bite my lip because he seems so downtrodden when he talks about it, and every word sounds like a struggle and I’m not sure if he’s going to clam up completely if I keep questioning him.
He starts assembling the strips of dough in alternating colours, almost like a Battenberg cake…
‘Chequerboard cookies!’ I suddenly realise what he’s doing. ‘God, you’re clever.’
It makes him laugh out loud and his cheeks redden at the compliment. ‘This is what happens when people make me talk. I can only do it if I’m distracted by baking.’
‘I’m going to keep that in mind.’ I grin at him and then, because I’m fighting a sudden urge to give him a hug, I reach my leg out until my big toe can poke his thigh. ‘Why is it so hard to talk about? Relationships end. We’ve all been there.’
He continues stacking strips of dough in alternate colours until he’s built a square roll of four-by-four vanilla and chocolate squares, lining them up perfectly, gluing each strip to the one next to it with a brush of egg white. ‘Relationships are hard to get out of. When you’ve been with someone for a long time, so long that they’ve become part of your family, it’s hard to admit that it isn’t working, and I felt too small and insignificant to do anything about it. Relationships are supposed to be about love and support and lifting each other up, and ours was the opposite. She picked holes in everything I did, everything I said, everything I wore, everything I thought…’ He starts a list that sounds like it could go on for a lot longer. ‘I tried to change, but nothing I did was good enough because I wasn’t good enough, and I let it beat me down until my confidence was zapped to nothing, and looking back now, I don’t know how I let it get so far.’
‘Because your confidence was zapped so much,’ I say quietly. That much is obvious. ‘Because that’s what people like Tabby do. They denigrate those around them to build up their own importance. But now look at you. Rising like a blue-haired phoenix from the ashes.’
He tucks his head against his shoulder and turns away. The blue hair is just for show. It’s part of the shield he shows the world. A physical representation of the bright personality he spent years suppressing.
‘I got the carousel job after the relationship ended, and getting to do magic again, getting to entertain kids and make adults gasp in disbelief… it gave me my self-worth back. I got to be myself at the carousel, and being liked by kids, being looked up to for everything I’d felt was so wrong about me… it gave me a much bigger sense of self. I regained my confidence. Realised I’ll never compromise myself again. I’ll never be bothered by whether I fit in with what people think I “should” be. Not for dating though. I don’t know how I’ll ever let anyone in again.’
I watch him slice the chequerboard log of dough into squares and place them on an oven tray. ‘You will because you’re a spectacular nut. You just need someone who understands that the spectacular bit complements the nut bit.’
He laughs out loud again. ‘Please, Cleo, I beg you to stop drowning me in such unfettered compliments.’
I wait until he looks up and meets my eyes. ‘You wouldn’t be you without both aspects and that would be a bad thing.’
He holds eye contact and a soft smile pulls at his mouth, and then he blinks and looks away. ‘I’ll remind you of that when I pull a playing card out from behind your ear tomorrow.’
He puts the oven tray in the freezer to chill for a few minutes while he tidies up and loads the dishwasher, refusing my offers to help. Instead, he holds a hand out to help me down from my spot on the counter top.
It’s a quick drop to the floor and I don’t need any assistance, but he’s laid himself bare in a way I never thought he would and something is pulling at me to touch him, even for a moment, so I brace one hand against the counter and slip my other hand into his.
His long, exceptionally talented fingers fold around mine and he gives them a gentle squeeze and waits for me to look at him again. ‘Thank you.’
Another moment passes as I look into his shining brown eyes, a reminder that you never know what someone has been through, and scratching the brightly coloured surface can reveal so much depth that it rivals the rabbit hole Alice fell down.
‘Right, you know what’s unfair, me talking that much about myself and you not returning the gesture.’ He drops my hand, collects the oven tray from the freezer and slides it into the waiting oven. ‘These need twelve minutes to cook, therefore you’ve got twelve minutes to spill your deepest secrets.’ He presses an imaginary stopwatch in his hand. ‘Go!’
He sits down cross-legged on the floor, his back against one of the under-counter cupboard doors, and although I trust Bram’s bakes not to spontaneously combust in the oven, I do the same and sit in front of the oven door, opposite him, watching the cookies start to rise.
‘You had a complicated relationship with your mum too?’ It’s Bram’s turn to prompt me now. I liked getting him to open up, but I’ve never intended to tell anyone this much about myself.
‘That Unbirthday party she threw for me was the last one before my dad announced he was in love with someone else, they were having a baby together, and disappeared from our lives for good. Mum didn’t cope well. Looking back now, I can see that she had some kind of emotional breakdown, but I didn’t understand that at the time. She thought he’d replaced her with a younger model and became obsessed with her age. She had cosmetic treatments that did more harm than good, and the bathroom was full of hideously expensive anti-ageing lotions and potions, and then a few months later, she went on a “girls’ holiday” to Greece and didn’t come back. She met some Greek God out there who made her feel young and decided to stay. I only saw her a handful of times after that. And then a couple of years ago, I got a phone call from one of her Greek friends, saying she’d passed away, and the grief hit me like a truck. I lost my job. I was working in a shop at the time, and I constantly messed things up. I snapped at a customer. I was struggling to sleep at night so I was always oversleeping in the mornings and arriving late. They fired me, rightfully so. Then there was the ex and that whole debacle, and after that, I kind of closed myself off from the world. I barely left the flat. My friends were supportive at first, but they got tired of trying to coerce me into going out with them, and you know what they say… a friend in need is a bloody nuisance.’
He lets out a loud laugh at the tribute to his own fondness for mixed-up idioms.
‘It’s hard to face the world when you haven’t for a while…’ I look over at him again, and his understanding smile and kind eyes are reassuring somehow. ‘I saw something online about A Tale As Old As Time, and I’ve always loved books and bookshops and I pushed myself to go there, just once at first, but then every week. I’d buy a book as a reward, something completely outside of my reading comfort zone – symbolic for stepping outside of my real-life comfort zone too. I got talking to Marnie and we bonded over our love of books. When she got more customers after the Bookishly Ever After festival last year, I started helping out in the shop, and I loved Ever After Street so much. It brought me back to life and made me want to live again. It reminded me of who I was before and what I wanted in life. When I heard about Lilith and the tearoom, it was like a sign. What I’d always dreamed of doing someday.’
‘And still your application didn’t go in until after the deadline…’
‘And you know that.’ I fix him with a hard stare. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Just some overheard gossip.’ He does a vague handwave. ‘Ignore me, I’m just nosy. You know what they say – curiosity makes the cat knowledgeable and fun to be around.’
The laugh makes my guard drop again. He’s leaning back against the cupboard door, his head resting against it, and his easygoingness and unintentional humour make him so effortless to talk to. ‘I doubted myself. I didn’t think I could do it. It was Marnie who hit send when I’d ummed and ahhed and watched the deadline tick past.’
‘Self-sabotage…’
‘I can’t bake, Bram! And I no longer have a kitchen! It’s not self-sabotage to think those two things might have a negative impact on my ability to run a tearoom.’
‘They might make it difficult, but nothing’s impossible. Come here whenever you like. Consider my kitchen yours.’
‘Bram, that’s—’ I was about to say how kind that is, but I’m cut off by the oven timer bleeping. ‘Well, no more kitchens are burning down on my watch, so one of us is going to have to get them out.’
He rolls his head along the cupboard door until his tired eyes meet mine. ‘I would rather they burn than you stop talking.’
I nearly say ‘awwww’ out loud but I stop myself as he hauls himself to his feet and shoves his hand into a brightly coloured oven glove – one of the little touches of himself that he’s brought into this bland house.
I touch a hand to my lips, surprised by what has come out of my own mouth. ‘I did not intend to tell you all that.’
‘If it’s any consolation, I didn’t intend to tell you any of what I told you either. Welcome to Oversharing Alley, population: two.’
It doesn’t seem like a bad thing when it comes to finding out about this spectacular nut, but I’m not sure it’s a good thing when he’s also finding out about me. I’ve hidden away for so long and I never thought it would be this easy to let someone in again, but Bram has a way of breaking down even the toughest construction of walls.
He puts the hot oven tray on the unit and while he turns around to switch the oven off, I’ve already prised a cookie off the baking paper and it’s on a plate in front of me, even though it’s far too hot to touch yet.
‘Oi!’ He’s taking the mick out of all the times I’ve told him off for grabbing something without letting it cool first.
I put a hand on my hip. ‘If you think I’m waiting even a fraction of a second longer than I have to…’
