‘Bram!’ I snatch them back, but in the blink of an eye, he’s switched them, and the three cards I’m holding are not the ones that were there nanoseconds ago. ‘How did you do that?’
‘Magic,’ he says with a grin and sidesteps to the teapot display to put the original ones back in.
‘So you’re going to tell me that was an empty threat, right?’ I watch as he winds the cards onto the strands of wire. ‘Just a big joke. Mr Hastings throwing his weight around. He wouldn’t actually expect us to cater a wedding, right?’ I sound too hopeful for my own good. ‘Right?’
‘My father doesn’t make empty threats.’
‘Ah yes, your father. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that key nugget of information in the panic of this wedding nonsense. As if things weren’t hard enough here, now I’ve got Mr Hastings’ golden boy watching my every mistake too.’
‘I’m many colours in the eyes of my father, golden is not one of them,’ he says without looking up from the display he’s fixing. ‘You know that.’
‘I don’t—’
‘You remember when you said you don’t care who he is…’
‘I don’t care who he is.’ I sigh and push a hand through my hair and accidentally dislodge my black bow headband. ‘I don’t care, Bram. I care about the fact you didn’t tell me.’
‘Cleo, can we not?’ This time, he looks me directly in the eyes. ‘I know you want to yell at me. I know you want to thump me, but not here, okay? Not now. Not with certain “I spy with my little eyes” watching.’ His eyes flick in the direction Tabby went, making it clear that anything she overhears will not stay between us. ‘Tonight, if you’ll still come over. You can shout at me then. You can hit me then, I promise.’
‘Scheduled violence. Something to look forward to.’ I can’t help smiling and I see the smile in his brown eyes when he looks at me. ‘Although I don’t think there’s much point in me coming over. We can’t cater your sister’s wedding. This is all over, no matter which way you slice it.’
‘Keep calm. Let’s not panic.’ He moves back to standing opposite and then winks at me. ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the carrots or hatch your chickens before they can count. It’s not over until the big-boned bullfrog sings.’
‘Your mixed sayings come out more when you’re panicking and trying to pretend you’re not.’
‘I don’t know how you know that.’
‘You’ve let me see behind your hat.’
‘There’s nothing behind my hat but blue hair.’ He gives me that megawatt Hatter grin, but today, I can see how much is hidden behind it. There is so much more to Bram than blue hair, hats, and immense control over a deck of cards. I’m starting to realise that all of those things exist only to hide the real person – a softer, quieter side who’s been hurt once too often.
12
The gate to Bram’s house opens as I pull up to it that night, and he’s sitting on the steps outside, waiting for me. He lifts a hand in greeting and I do the same through the car windscreen as I stop under the magnolia tree and park on a carpet of fallen pink blossoms.
The early-evening spring sun is behind me as I get out of the car and crunch across the gravel. I’m unsure of everything now. I don’t even know if I’m angry at him. The panic of being expected to cater a wedding has obliterated everything else. It feels like weeks since I found out who his father is, not mere hours.
‘Hi.’ He holds a hand up to shade his eyes as he squints up at me. He’s got a zip-up grey hoodie on with the sleeves pulled up to his elbows and the hood half-up, partially covering his longish hair where it frames his face, soft and wavy now after a shower.
‘Hi, Bram Hastings.’ I climb the stone steps and sit down beside him.
He groans and buries his head in his hands. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You can hit me now, I don’t mind.’
Without lifting his head, he holds his right arm out so it’s in front of me, but instead of hitting it, I trace my fingertips along his skin, letting my fingers rub across the fine dark hair covering his strong forearm. ‘I don’t want to hit you. I want to know why you didn’t tell me.’
‘Oh come on, really?’ His chin is resting on his other arm, almost on his knees, but his eyes are trained on the spot where my fingers are touching. ‘You were wary of me from the start because I’d phoned him. If you’d known we were related, you’d never have let me in.’
‘And wasn’t that a huge…’ I was going to sarcastically snap ‘mistake’ but I stop myself. It doesn’t feel like it was a mistake to trust him. No matter who his father is, he has done nothing but build me up and help The Wonderland Teapot to thrive.
He tilts his head to the side and meets my eyes, and I know he’s heard the unsaid word and recognised that I didn’t say it. ‘His shadow is large and impossible to get away from. My whole life, I’ve had people befriending me because of who he is, because they want me to “put in a good word”, or for a million other reasons that all revolve around him. The other night when you said you didn’t care who he was, my heart kind of leapt and did a fluttery thing. I wanted that to be true, but it never is. That shadow looms too large for anyone to ignore.’ His voice sounds strangled and quiet, and he’s talking to the concrete of the steps rather than to me. ‘I know I should have told you, but honestly, I liked you not knowing. If you liked me, I wanted you to like me for being a good Mad Hatter, not because you thought I would have some influence over your lease. And if you hated me, I wanted you to hate me for being me, not because of who my father is.’
I can’t help noticing the anomaly in those two options. Like him for being the Mad Hatter or dislike him for being himself. Why is there no option for simply liking him as he is?
As I’m thinking about it, I realise my fingers are still on his forearm and pull them back quickly, and he jolts in surprise, like he hadn’t noticed either. ‘I meant what I said the other night. I don’t care who your father is, Bram. I care who you are. Your father’s shadow has bully written all over it. Who he is has no bearing on who you are, other than to ensure you’re the complete opposite of him.’
His smile starts off small and gradually widens until he’s beaming wider than any Mad Hatter grin he’s ever thrown my way, but for once, it’s a completely genuine beam that makes it impossible not to return until we’re both sitting on his steps, smiling at each other.
There’s something about him that’s infinitely trustworthy. From the nervous habit of card shuffling to the instant slip into character when Mr Hastings refused to shake his hand. It’s clear that Bram’s been on the wrong end of his father’s boorish behaviour many times. ‘Why’d you do that with the confetti today? And don’t say it’s because you’re obnoxious, because you aren’t. You must’ve known it would only make him angrier…’
‘Because I’m sick of being told there’s something wrong with me.’ He says it instantly and then stops and thinks over what he’s said. ‘If I know someone doesn’t like me, I want to be more me. I want to wind them up. I want to drive them crackers. I want to give them a reason to hate me. When I’m told that I’m too much, I want to be too much.’ He lets out a long sigh. ‘I’m an adult. I don’t need my father’s approval, but sometimes I want it. I want something I do to be good enough. I’ve tried, so hard…’ His voice cracks and it sounds so aching and desperate that it makes my heart leap into my throat. ‘But I’m never, ever going to be who he wishes I was, so I may as well be ornery and cantankerous. It’s easier to be hated for a character I play than for who I am.’
I didn’t intend to take his hand, but suddenly I’m holding it, clasping it between both of mine. ‘So your level of annoyingness is based solely on how annoyed people are with you…’
‘The sign of someone who had a screwed-up childhood and has a plethora of deep-rooted issues, I’m sure.’
He says it with such a frivolous tone that it makes me smile, but it also confirms something I’ve been trying to figure out. Bram has been nowhere near as annoying lately as he was at first, and I hadn’t yet worked out whether it was him being less annoying or my tolerance level growing. ‘I’ve noticed that, you know.’
‘The plethora of deep-rooted issues?’
I laugh. ‘No. That you haven’t been anywhere near as annoying as you were at first.’
‘You haven’t been anywhere near as annoyed with me as you were at first.’ He moves his hand in mine until our fingers line up and then slots them together and squeezes. ‘I’d go so far as to say you might even like me, just a little bit.’
It makes me laugh out loud, because I know he doesn’t mean it in that way, and because it’s unequivocally true. He’s impossible not to like when you get to know him. ‘Nah. Not at all.’ I’m grinning as I say it. ‘Not even the teensiest little bit. No siree.’
He’s laughing too. He knows I’m joking, and I know how good he is at reading people. There’s no point even trying to hide it.
His eyes gleam as he disentangles our hands and reaches over, clicks his fingers from somewhere behind me, and pulls a tulip out from behind my ear.
