Page 23 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museum

I go to ask him if anyone saw him coming back, but realise how ridiculous it is before the words come out, so I change the question. ‘You do wear something other than suits sometimes then?’

‘Of course. For sleeping or lying around the house. I’m intending to spend tonight on the landing with only dustsheets for padding. A suit wouldn’t cut it in this situation.’ He fiddles with the drawstring of his jogging bottoms. ‘Although you do have a lot of views on my wardrobe choices.’

‘Well, you dropped the mermaid in a tank idea, so you’ve left me with nothing else to complain about.’

He’s laughing as he dumps the bags he’s carrying at the bottom of the stairs and pulls the Tablet of Gloom out. ‘Just going to do a walkaround and make sure nothing’s missing at this point, and hope it stays that way.’

I debate following him, but I decide I’ve already aroused enough suspicion tonight with my overzealous protest about his stakeout idea, so I go back to the till and finish cashing up for the night, pleased to see the marked increase in takings since the social media posts went live, and that distracts me from thinking about how the ever-loving heck I’m going to manage to smuggle something out without him catching me.

It’s definitely going to be a long night.

* * *

‘Today’s Lumière post has got a fantastic response.

’ Warren’s sitting cross-legged on the spread-out dustsheets when I get to the upstairs landing, his water bottle in front of him, and his fingers are flying across the Tablet of Gloom’s screen while the other hand holds a sandwich he’s munching on.

‘There are 233 comments and they’re almost all positive.

People saying they’ve forgotten about this place and want to come here again.

People saying they loved their visit here and this is great fun.

People saying they’re long overdue a visit to Ever After Street or that they wish they lived close enough to visit.

Someone’s started a “fairytales in the wild” hashtag.

This is really capturing imaginations. There’s so much marketing potential in this, I hadn’t realised how big it could get. ’

‘Big?’

‘The fairytale museum with exhibits that come to life at night. The secret lives of the museum exhibits. Night at the Museum in real life. This has turned itself into a huge selling point.’

‘The others have turned it into a huge selling point. They saw the social media potential and acted on it, even though they had nothing to do with the rearranging of the exhibits themselves.’

He raises an eyebrow without looking up from his tablet.

‘We have to tap into this while we can. Tomorrow, we’ll film a little promo video, I’ll record and you can move things offscreen so it’ll look like they’re moving on their own.

We’ll overlay it with some music and post it online, and on your website, which I’ve got a designer working on as we speak, and—’

‘Have you?’

‘Yeah. I told you I’ve got a small budget and that website needed some serious investment.

I’ve seen some early preview pages and it’s great.

He’s got a little animated wishing well in one corner with butterflies fluttering around it, and he’s going to do seasonal themes that can be changed easily.

It’ll really help with your presence online.

’ His voice speeds up when he’s excited about something, and it’s easy to see he’s wholly invested in this.

‘Thank you. That’s really nice of you. Surprisingly nice.’

He looks up and the smile he gives me is nothing but sad, and I wish I hadn’t added the bit about it being surprising, because it feels like I’ve just kicked a puppy for no reason.

I immediately want to apologise but I’ll only end up digging myself in deeper, so I pretend I haven’t said anything while feeling silently guilty for being so cynical.

His first impression all those weeks ago might not have been great, but there’s nothing surprising about him being nice now I’ve got to know him a bit.

I’ve turned all the lights off downstairs so it looks like the museum is closed for the night, but up here, Warren’s put a super-beam torch on a stand, ready to turn on when darkness falls later.

‘Come. Sit.’ He pats the space opposite him and when I take my boots off and sit down, he pushes the health food shop bag towards me. ‘Help yourself to anything. There’s sandwiches, crisps, chocolate, I didn’t know what you’d like.’

I have a better idea and go to make us a cup of tea each, and he looks surprised when I come back a few minutes later and put a mug down on the floor in front of him.

‘Thanks,’ he murmurs, sounding perplexed by such a small gesture, but I haven’t exactly been the most welcoming host, and nattering over cups of tea isn’t something we’ve done before, and maybe it should have been.

There’s a twinge of guilt inside me that I’ve held back so much and given him a hard time rather than being open to his suggestions.

I’m starting to feel like his presence here is exactly the push I needed, but I haven’t been able to admit that to him yet.

I sit down again on the side of the landing nearest the stairs and he immediately shifts around so he’s facing me, but doesn’t put the Tablet of Gloom down, so I pull the shop bag over and rummage through it. ‘You brought crisps to a stakeout? They’re, like, the noisiest food ever!’

‘They’re not crisps, they’re unsalted baked lentil curls. And I’m sorry, but I’m not an experienced stakeouter. I’ve never had to base my snack choices on their perceived noise levels before.’

‘What do you normally base them on – nutritional content and value for money?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

‘No! Most people choose snacks based on how good they taste and how much they enjoy them.’

He makes a noise of indifference. ‘Enjoyment is overrated.’

‘I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever heard a sadder sentence spoken that that. Don’t you enjoy anything?’

‘I might enjoy those. Open them and we’ll find out.’

I do and hold the bag out to him, and he takes one and pops it in his mouth and makes a face. ‘If I enjoyed eating concrete.’

I take one too, hoping it won’t be as bad as it looks, but if anything, it’s worse. ‘Concrete might be more appealing. Why on earth would you choose these?’

He laughs. ‘I apologise. I’ll know for next time I’m on a stakeout.’

It makes me laugh too. ‘Do you expect to spend a lot of your career from now on staking out non-sentient objects that start coming to life?’

He’s still laughing as he takes another crisp, holds it between his teeth and speaks around it. ‘You never know.’

I can’t help smiling at his cheeky grin. ‘I’ve spent many hours in this place after closing time, and I can honestly say I’ve never done anything quite as strange as this.’

‘That’s been a regular occurrence since I got here. Every day brings another iteration of “I’ve never done anything as strange as this before”.’

‘Well, this is a museum of “things that go bump in the night”.’

‘Oh, if going bump was the only thing they did, I’d have no problem with it. Unfortunately what your lot do is a lot more complicated than “bumping” and makes them a lot harder to track down afterwards.’

The sheer surrealness of this conversation washes over me again, and I’m unsure if he’s pulling my leg or if he’s serious, and I get the sense that he isn’t sure if it’s me who’s pulling his leg either, and how bizarre this is makes me chuckle nervously.

I want to confess that I know exactly who’s doing the bumping in the night and it’s not the exhibits themselves.

He’s looking at me with one side of his lips tilted into a smile. I meet his eyes and the urge to tell him the truth clamours at my throat, so I look away and shift around, moving so I’m lying down on my front and looking out through the baluster posts.

He lets out the most minute of sighs, but it feels like it’s aimed more at himself than at me, and I furtively glance over my shoulder and watch as he looks upwards at the ceiling like he’s silently trying to vent frustration, and then reluctantly gets to his feet, stalks across the landing to pick up the sleeping bag, and unrolls it as he pads back, wearing only white socks under his black jogging bottoms, and stops on my other side.

‘It’s cold tonight.’ His words are interspersed by the snick of the zipper opening, but instead of getting into the sleeping bag himself, he opens it fully, so it becomes a big puffy sheet, like a duvet, and then he holds it out to me, offering to share some of its warmth.

I’m again touched by his thoughtfulness, and I reach up for it, but he stops me. ‘Budge up, I prefer this side.’

This time he motions for me to shift across the landing to the space he was just occupying because he clearly wants my spot, and it’s such a strange, random thing that it catches me off-guard and I edge across the landing, and only afterwards do I stop to think how odd a request it is.

He joins me in lying down on his front next to me, seemingly satisfied that he’s on my left side now, and then he spreads the sleeping bag out and lets me pull half of it across myself, which I do on autopilot because my mind is stuck on how strange that was.

Why could it possibly matter which one of us takes which side of the landing?

‘What was all that about?’ I ask when he’s finished wriggling around to get comfortable.

The bag of lentil curls is open between us, and instead of answering, he stuffs two of them into his mouth and then mutters something entirely unintelligible around them.

I’m not sure what’s more bizarre – the inexplicable swapping of sides or the deliberate action to avoid giving me an answer, but I decide not to push it.

Anyone willing to eat two of those dreadful crisps in one go has suffered enough.

‘Ah, well, at least if the museum ghost comes up the stairs, it’ll get you first and give me time to get away. ’