‘It’s a distinct possibility,’ I mumble, and then I have to go and hide out the back to get my emotions under control, and when I look up, Marnie is leaning against the doorframe, looking worried. ‘Why don’t you answer one of his texts?’
‘I did answer one of his texts. I told him to go away.’
‘And?’
‘He went away.’
She laughs and then schools her face when I must look like I’m mere seconds away from wailing.
We’ve opened The Wonderland Teapot again today. I was at such a loss yesterday morning, the day after the wedding, I didn’t know what to do or where to go, so I did what I’ve been doing every Monday morning since March – I put on an Alice dress and a black bow headband, added the pair of shiny black shoes that I’ve worn so much they don’t even pinch my toes any more, and came to work.
No one from the council has said that I shouldn’t. No one has confirmed that I’ve been fired from the tearoom, although it’s probably a safe bet to assume that I have. I’m expecting a ‘cease and desist’ visit from Mr Hastings at any moment, or one of his minions if he can’t stand the sight of me himself, but no one has come. The postman has been and gone, and yet another day has passed without a letter arriving that tells me I’m sacked and currently trespassing on council property.
So I carry on, even though everything’s in limbo, and the tearoom is missing a Mad Hatter. Marnie’s insisted on not leaving me to handle it by myself, so she’s bought a Cheshire Cat jumper and a cat ears headband, persuaded Darcy to look after A Tale As Old As Time, and spent the past two days helping me.
A father comes in with two little boys who want an Unbirthday party, and Bram’s absence is felt like a sinkhole in the middle of the tearoom. I push two tables together in a corner and put some props out to make it look like a Mad Hatter’s tea party. Colourful teacups glued together in stacks. Broken teapots with clay mushrooms sprouting from them. Colourful plates and a table sprinkled with confetti. But I never realised how impossible it would be to have a Mad Hatter’s celebration with no Mad Hatter.
I try to be fun and carefree, but I’m not loud. I can’t do magic. I mess up pulling a playing card out of my pocket, never mind making one appear in mid-air. I sing the boys ‘The Unbirthday Song’ but Bram’s lack of self-consciousness made me less self-conscious too, and without him, I’m crowing an out-of-tune disaster.
He’s left a bag of confetti, and I blow it over the boys. One of them gets glitter in his eye and starts bawling. One of them misses the playing card arch with the hedgehog ball on the flamingo croquet and has a tantrum, and the dad is busy dealing with the glitter-in-eye incident, and there’s no one to distract him from the tantrum with a magic trick, and I try to handle it by attempting to… persuade him not to have a tantrum. It does not end well. Technically it ends with him kicking me in the shin, which is fair enough, really. When the dad and two boys leave, it does not look like they’ll come back, ever.
I never went to his house and never got the Unbirthday cake recipe on Sunday, but I’ve been using Marnie’s kitchen to bake. It’s been days since I needed to use any of my supermarket-bought back-ups, and even that makes me sad because Bram worked so hard to make me believe in myself and now he’s not here to share it with.
‘Oh, thank God,’ I murmur as I see off the last customer at 5 p.m. the following day and turn the ‘open’ sign over to ‘closed’. Wednesday was no more successful than Monday or Tuesday were.
‘How can you mope in a place that’s as happy as this?’ Marnie starts clearing the tables and I pull on Bram’s bright pink rubber gloves and make a start on the washing up.
‘It’s not though, is it? It was Bram who made it happy. With me it’s just… doomed to failure, like everything else I get my hands on.’
‘I don’t think it’s the shop that Bram made happy, do you?’ Even though I’m in the back room and she’s still on the shop floor, I can hear the all-knowing raised eyebrow.
‘It’s like a break-up but we never actually broke up, and I’m not even sure you can break up if you only kissed someone for the first time less than ten hours before said break-up.’
‘No, but you’ve been emotionally attached to him for a lot longer than ten hours. And he has to you. I’ve never seen anyone so happy simply to be around another person. I’ve known Bram for a while now. He’s bright, loud, hilarious, and always, always putting on a front. He’s worked on that carousel for nearly two years and none of us have ever got to know him because he’s never let anyone see behind that front. Apart from you. And me and Darcy when we came over the other night. And you’ve done that. I don’t know anything about his life or why he finds it so hard to let people in, but he’s let you in far enough to let you bring other people in too, and that means something.’
‘It means everything, but look at what he’s lied about…’
‘Maybe, but there’s no way he sabotaged those bakes. He was so dedicated the other night when we were there. He worked harder than any of us.’
‘That was for his sister’s wedding.’
‘It’s not his style, Cleo. He’d make things disappear, not pour bloody salt onto them. And honestly, I believed everything he said the other day. It’s obvious how much he believes in this place and in you. I think that obliterated whatever was supposed to come before.’
The problem with Bram is that everything he says is infinitely believable, and at least some of the things he’s said have been infinitely untrue, and I don’t know how to marry up those two contradictions. ‘So why didn’t he tell me? When I asked him about who was given the tearoom before me, and if it was Tabby and her wellness retreat, he said he didn’t know.’
‘And you’ve never let a little white lie continue for longer than it should have because you were scared of the consequences if the truth came out?’
‘No,’ I huff and plunge my hands into the sink because I don’t want to admit she’s right.
She appears in the doorway with another tray full of crumb-filled plates. ‘Don’t make me bring up the rose cupcak—’
‘I know, okay?’ Those rose cupcakes will haunt my nightmares until my dying day. More than anything, I wish I’d been honest about them from day one. Maybe none of this would’ve happened then. Maybe they’d have said no, and Bram would’ve continued with his plan to run the tearoom, and I… would never have met him. I don’t know which is the worst option.
The bookshop is overrun with customers on Thursday and Darcy’s got a gardening group at the castle, so Franca comes to help out instead, and there’s still no word from anyone. No one has come with any paperwork. No one has demanded I return their keys and vacate the premises immediately, and I’m not brave enough to phone the council and try to speak to Mr Hastings. I’m not keen on speaking to him at the best of times, and having caused a scene at his daughter’s wedding and been exposed as a lying liar who lies and takes credit for other people’s cakes, these are definitely not the best of times.
The week creeps closer and closer to the inspection on Friday, and surely the only explanation for why I haven’t been fired yet is that Mr Hastings doesn’t know that The Wonderland Teapot is still open, and when word does get back to him, I certainly will be.
‘He texted me last night.’ Marnie pushes her phone so close to my face that I take a step backwards before I can read it.
I know she hates me, and I know it’s unspoken best-friend law that you have to hate me too, but I don’t know who else to turn to. Please help me, Marnie. I’ll do anything to fix this.
Oh, this is Bram, by the way.
Seconds later, another one, and then a couple more.
You’d probably figured that out already.
Unless you have several best friends going through romantic crises, that is.
I don’t usually send this many text messages in a row. I’ll leave you alone now.
It gives me a little thrill that he hasn’t given up yet. He hasn’t texted me since I told him to go away, and I keep checking my phone, unsure of which one I’m dreading more – that he will text me… or that he won’t.
It’s Friday morning, the day of the food safety inspection, and although the tearoom has to stay closed today, Marnie’s got Darcy looking after the bookshop again so she can be here for moral support. The text on her screen makes my heart beat faster because he still wants to fix things. ‘I can’t deal with this right now. The inspector will be here at any—’
‘Are you Miss Jordan?’ Before Marnie and I have got inside, a young man wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase appears from nowhere. He shows an ID card and pushes past us to enter first, and then mutters when he walks into a chair because I haven’t got as far as getting inside to switch a light on yet.
