Page 13 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museum

He picks up a pen from the desk and twiddles it between his fingers as he thinks about it.

‘Because this place is different to anywhere I’ve ever seen.

When I first heard of this, I read the reports, and I could see somewhere that had so much potential but was missing the mark, and—’ He must see me bristling because he changes tack, and his voice switches from accusatory to persuasive.

‘You must be able to see that – even though there’s nothing wrong per se and what you do here is charming and good-intentioned, things could definitely be better? I’m not wrong in saying that, am I?’

Annoyingly, he isn’t, but it irks me to admit it.

I know he has a point, but the last thing I want is for him to think I need his input.

If my museum needs to be saved, it should be up to me.

All right, maybe it could do with an upgrade or two, and I should have done something about it earlier, but when things are ticking over, it’s easier to bury your head in the sand and convince yourself that everything’s fine and always will be.

When I don’t answer, he chuckles like he can hear the unspoken war between my head and my heart, but he doesn’t push me on it.

‘All right, what do you think the problem is? You know this place better than anyone. It’s blindingly clear that no one could love it more than you.

Why do you think it’s not doing better?’

‘I think we’re invisible.’ I answer his question instinctively, and only stop to think about what I’ve said after the words have come out, but now I’ve said it, I realise it is true.

‘We have a wonderful vantage point on Ever After Street – right at the end of the road and at the top of a hill. Grey stone steps leading symmetrically to the doors of this three-storey grey-brick, partially ivy-covered building. Shoppers literally can’t miss us, and yet, I feel that we stand here like a ghost, in plain sight but somehow unseen.

I don’t have the budget for adding new exhibits very often, and most of the existing ones have been here for a long time, so there’s nothing new to advertise, nothing to encourage people to come back, so we sort of blend into the background and disappear from public perception. ’

He fiddles with the pen he’s still faffing with, turning it over and over, pressing each end against the wooden desk.

‘So what we need to do is turn the museum into the architectural equivalent of you then, because you could stop traffic.’ He leans over and uses the pen to lift a pink section of my curly hair and then quickly drops it when I frown at him because it doesn’t sound like a good thing.

He sounds like he means it in a ‘could cause a multi-car pile-up resulting in multiple deaths and horrific injuries’ sort of way, either that or he’s comparing my colourful hair to a set of traffic lights.

And he’s got it so wrong. I couldn’t stop traffic.

I couldn’t stop anything. I can’t stop some uppity development company swooping in and taking this building.

I can’t drag enough visitors in. I fight causes for other people who need help on Ever After Street, but I find it impossible to admit it when I need help myself.

I learned early on in life that people you rely on can be taken away in an instant, so it’s better not to rely on anyone.

I’m used to people assuming I’m coping fine, and it’s hard to admit that sometimes, I’m not, and now I spend my days skulking around here like an apparition in my unseen museum, waiting for someone to look for me. ‘I feel like I’m invisible too.’

I don’t realise I’ve said the words out loud until the pen drops onto the desk and he slides the stool back far enough to look at me.

Why did I say that? I’ve never even said that to Mickey, never mind a man I only met this week.

My cheeks blaze so hot that surely lava is about to explode out of them like a bubbling volcano, but something about him equating the colourful streaks of my sister’s hairdressing practice to some sort of strong, confident personality has rubbed me up the wrong way.

I know how people see me around here, like a warrior, always on hand to fight for a good cause, and no one realises that I’m frantically treading water and trying to stay afloat in a sea of falling visitors and declining profit.

Colours of the Wind does need help – for me or because of me?

‘Intriguing…’ he murmurs, and gladly we’re saved from any further awkwardness when the mum and little boy cross the lobby and ask if there’s anything upstairs, and telling them it’s staff-only gives me a chance to hope Warren develops sudden-onset amnesia and instantly forgets everything I just said.

‘You need a map,’ he says when they disappear into the Fairytale Homes hall.

‘Maps cost money.’

‘Not all extra expenses are unnecessary. Nice quality postcard-sized maps with some marketing info on the back, a link to the website, social media accounts and hashtags to post about their visit. Something people would keep as a memento… You do have a website, right?’

‘Of course.’ I cringe internally. News and announcements of new exhibits are posted on the Ever After Street website, but the museum’s own website is… shamefully neglected.

He gets his phone out of his suit pocket and I have a horrible feeling that he’s about to look up my website.

I see him wince as the drab background and bright, blocky text assaults his eyeballs. ‘Oh. Wow.’

It is not the good kind of wow.

‘I’d say it looks like a five-year-old put this together, but a five-year-old would do a vastly better job. This is not a website, this is a school project from before the internet was widely used. It wouldn’t have been up to date in 1998.’

‘Look, you didn’t ask me if I had a good website. The Ever After Street social media is—’

‘Nothing whatsoever to do with your own online presence. This… needs help.’

I can’t disagree with him there, and that’s the nice way of putting it. ‘I’m not a techy person. I don’t know the first thing about websites. I bought the domain name and used a template thingy to put some stuff about the museum in. I couldn’t afford to hire a professional.’

‘I see that.’ He types something into his phone and I catch a flash of a notes app as he presses send.

‘The Phone of Gloom is just as bad, you know. Did you just type something about me into that and send it to your own tablet?’

‘Just trying to keep all my notes together. You may not realise it, but there’s a lot to do around here.

Every aspect of this place needs attention.

You excel at the exhibits, but… um…’ It’s like he runs out of sentence before he can get to the really insulting part, but I can see his point.

I love the exhibits side of Colours of the Wind.

I do not love the paperworky, admin-type tasks that come with it, and I have a tendency to put them off for an impressively long time.

‘…do not excel at other aspects?’ I offer, because he’s got a way of shining a spotlight on the things that I should have dealt with by now, and I can’t help thinking that I already knew everything he’s saying but I ignored it, and maybe I’d be in a better position by now if I hadn’t.

He doesn’t confirm or deny my words, because it’s probably so obvious that it doesn’t need any concurrence. Instead, he stands up with another groan and walks out from behind the counter until he’s standing opposite me, and I take my stool back and plonk myself down on it with a huff.

He paces, twirling his phone between his hands. ‘Tell me about the empty rooms upstairs.’

Oh, joy, he’s found them. I was hoping the three locked doors on the second floor might escape his notice. ‘They used to be function rooms. I used to offer things like children’s birthday parties, a space for art and craft classes, the occasional wedding reception…’

‘But…?’

‘Well, Witt came back and he and Sadie turned the castle into a functioning destination venue. They hire rooms of the castle out to birthday parties, weddings, receptions, they offer a space for classes in the grounds, and who would want to have a function held here when they could go to the Ever After Street castle itself? It was worthwhile when the castle was a closed-down shell, but now it’s up and running again, I can’t compete with them, and I don’t have enough exhibits to fill three more rooms so…

’ I trail off, unsure of how to end the sentence.

He’s stopped pacing long enough to raise an eyebrow, but he doesn’t say anything.

‘I am trying. They’ll be full of exhibits one day. I was thinking of moving things around. Splitting the exhibits into movie franchises rather than the princesses together, the princes together. I could divide those large rooms and have each section dedicated to a single fairytale…’

‘Or you could hold functions again. Was it profitable?’

‘It had its moments. Children’s birthday parties were a big thing, but no one wants their birthday party here nowadays when they can have it in an actual castle or in The Wonderland Teapot across the road.’

‘So you have these huge rooms of empty space just sitting there?’

‘They’re not hu—’

‘I have the master key, Lissa. I let myself in. They’re huge.’

I huff again. The truth is that I haven’t known what to do with the function rooms since people stopped booking them for functions.

Fill them with more exhibits, certainly, but new exhibits take time and money, and filling three huge upstairs rooms is a daunting impossibility when there’s still empty space on the main floor and my focus has always been on making the downstairs halls the best they can be.

He’s quiet for a while, still pacing back and forth in front of the desk. ‘It’s easy to build a picture of what’s happened here, you know.’

‘Oh, please, do enlighten me. I can’t wait to hear the insight of someone who got here two days ago. You must know everything when little ol’ me who’s been doing this for ten years is completely clueless.’

He chuckles at my sarcasm, but it doesn’t deter him.

Instead, he comes over and leans his elbows on the desk and looks up at me through his dark eyelashes, and my breath catches for just a second.

His eyes are so intensely blue and I feel like he can see right through every wall I put up.

‘You’re not invisible, but you make yourself small to accommodate others.

The museum is ticking over rather than thriving because you’re more concerned about not upsetting anyone.

You have a right to make the most of your space even if it means treading on a few toes. ’

I roll my shoulders, trying to ease the uncomfortable feeling because he is, once again, not totally wrong.

I do consider the other businesses and their owners whenever I do anything here, but it’s a mutual respect that goes both ways.

My Ever After Street friends have all helped me out with the museum many times, and the last thing I want to do is undermine their shops by offering something similar.

‘We don’t do that around here. We help each other.

We love each other. It might not be the most businessy way to do things, but it works for us on Ever After Street. ’

‘Does it though? Is it working for you?’

‘Yes.’ I glare at him and a challenge flashes in his eyes, and I’m determined to out-stare him, but I find my cheeks turning red under his gaze and not more than a few seconds passes before I turn away, leaving him wallowing in his self-satisfied grin of winning our unofficial stare-off.

‘We’re colleagues with the same purpose, not competitors.

And I’m still here, aren’t I? Still “ticking over” well enough to be in business after ten years, so I don’t get everything wrong. ’

‘Your visitors are people who come to Ever After Street anyway and pop in for a look, whereas people should be coming to visit here and having a look at Ever After Street afterwards. This should be a destination. This place could be worth a hundred cinema complexes with a nudge in the right direction. You are by far the most interesting attraction on Ever After Street, and the others should be gaining customers from you, not the other way around.’

I’m touched by what seems like an authentic belief in my museum, and bristling at yet another hint that what I already do isn’t good enough, and also at his ability to say things that need to be said, in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.

Yes, things could be better, and maybe I could have done more to make them so, and that’s not an easy thing to admit.

Before I can respond, he pushes up off his elbows so he’s grinning down at me where he’s standing and I’m sitting. ‘Do you know what I’m good at?’

‘Oh, the endless possibilities of that answer…’ I can’t help laughing to myself as I run through options in my head, and only share the least offensive one with him. ‘Suit shopping?’

He laughs. ‘Improving visibility. And that’s what we’re going to do, together. Between us, I think we can give this place exactly what it needs.’

His words give me a shard of hope and an equal sinking feeling.

I want to believe him. Everything he’s said so far hasn’t been entirely unfair, and he does make some good points, but I still don’t know what he gets out of this.

He’s mentioned that he’s trying to prove a point to his mother-slash-boss and take the company in a different direction, but is that really all there is to it?

He’s come in like he’s the only thing standing between my business and certain doom, but is he?

How can I trust him when I think that, whatever his reason for getting involved in this, I haven’t yet heard the real one?