Page 31 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museum

And I can’t help but smile because this is exactly what I’ve always hoped my visitors would feel, no matter their age.

‘No one is ever too old to reconnect with their inner child. In fact, I happen to think it gets more important as we get older. It’s all too easy to forget what it’s like to be young and to find wonder in anything.

’ I glance at Warren again. ‘The world is good at snuffing that out, and if I can do anything to help people get that back, then that’s the best thing I could ever hear. Thank you.’

She smiles too and I love the sense of connecting with someone who truly gets what I wanted to do here.

‘Those naughty exhibits escaping just adds another layer to the magic too. I don’t know how you’re doing it, but very well done, both of you.’

Until now, Warren has been frozen to the spot, utterly transfixed by her words, but at this, he stands upright, looking surprised that she’s included him as well.

‘I want to knoooow!’ The granddaughter looks up at us, sucking a thumb shyly.

‘No, no, we mustn’t spoil the magic,’ her grandmother says.

‘You really want to know?’ Warren steps out from behind the counter and crouches down to talk to the little girl, and when she nods enthusiastically, he carries on.

‘The exhibits are magic! They’re real and they only come to life at night when no one’s watching them.

Lissa and I stayed here one night and we hid from them and do you know what we saw? ’

She looks so excited that she might burst before he reaches the end of his tale.

‘We saw Aladdin’s Magic Carpet flying around all by itself!’ He waves his hands through the air, depicting the movement a flying carpet might make.

‘No, you never!’

‘We did, scout’s honour.’ He does the scout salute and the little girl giggles in delight.

He holds his hand up for a high five and she smacks it much harder than he was expecting, and he falls onto his bum, pretending that the force of her hand knocked him over, making her laugh even harder, but it makes something inside me melt.

There’s something infinitely trustworthy about someone who isn’t afraid to make a fool of themselves to make a child laugh.

He’s wonderful with kids, and it makes me think of the things he’s said over the last few weeks, about being bullied, losing his father at a young age, not having much of a childhood, and still feeling like a kid in adult’s clothing.

There really is an inner child in there, screaming to get out.

‘Anyway, we just wanted to pass on our compliments and say thank you and keep doing what you’re doing, there’s not many places like this in the world, and it’s been a joy to find one. We’ll be back again very soon!’

The little girl choruses, ‘Byeeeeeeee!’ as they walk away, waving over her shoulder to Warren as he picks himself up off the floor.

‘You’re really getting into the swing of things here…’ I comment, leaving an open-ended space for a response.

‘I love it. I wish I could stay forever.’ He’s got a distant look on his face where he’s leaning on the counter with his chin resting in his hands, watching the woman meet her husband at the door and the little girl takes his hand too and swings between them.

‘Really?’

‘Ye—’ He realises what he’s saying and quickly corrects himself. ‘I mean, no, obviously. Just, er, winding you up. This is a job, just like any other.’

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt since opening this museum, it’s that this is a job unlike any I have done before, and if it is to end, it will be unlike any I might find in the future either.

The thought makes a sense of melancholy settle over me, and clearly unwilling to expand on any of the things that have just happened, Warren busies himself tidying up the sketch papers still strewn across the counter.

‘So if you approve this design, I’ll get the logo scanned in and send you a useable image file, so you’ll always be able to use it after I’ve gone, and I’ll send you a link to the wholesaler’s website our company uses so you can pick the best products for the gift shop.

On the map front, if I colourise this, scan it in, and scale it to the right size, it’s only an investment of forty quid to get a thousand of them printed as postcards, I’m happy to expense that, and if they’re popular then we’ll know it’s worthwhile.

The map will be on the front, and I’ll design a back with the logo, encouragement to leave a review on travel websites and to come back again sometime. ’

In the middle of his shuffling of the papers that he’s already reshuffled beyond any shuffling need, I reach over to grab his hand and give it a squeeze. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He hasn’t taken his eyes off the spot where my fingers are curled around his, and they twitch like he wants to squeeze them back, but he doesn’t, and enough time passes that it becomes awkward.

‘That was a reference to the Moana song, right?’ I joke to ease the tension.

‘Hah. Good spot.’ He pulls his hand away from mine and shakes it like my fingers have squeezed too tightly, and then nods towards the stairs.

‘I should get back to the Tablet of Gloom. Er, I mean, vitally important piece of work equipment that I couldn’t do my job without.

How have you even got me calling it that now? ’

I can’t help laughing at how bewildered he looks. ‘The magic’s getting to you, Mr Berrington.’

‘Something is all right.’ He looks like he wants to say more, but his phone rings in his pocket and he pulls it out, looks at the screen, and puts it back in again.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen him ignore his phone or the constant notification noises coming from his tablet lately, and I’m intrigued by what’s changed between now and the almost surgical attachment of a few weeks ago. ‘Do you need to get that?’

‘Yes, I do.’ He looks down at the pocket of his trousers like he’s contemplating it and then looks back up at me. ‘But I’m not going to.’

‘And you’re okay with that?’

He thinks for a moment and then grins at me and starts heading for the stairs. ‘I’m getting there.’

* * *

It’s not the last time I hear Warren’s phone ring. When the museum is quiet, the loud ringtone filters down through the floors, and I also hear how abruptly he shuts it off when he rejects call after call.

It’s a few days later and the museum is closed for the night.

I don’t intend to eavesdrop on a private conversation, but he’s been upstairs all afternoon, and now I’ve shut the door to visitors, I’m on my way up to check in on him when I hear his phone ring again, and for whatever reason, this time he decides to answer it with a snarled, ‘What?’

I freeze on the spot halfway up the stairs.

I hadn’t realised until this very moment that I’ve never heard him answer the phone before.

He doesn’t talk on the phone, ever. He does absolutely everything by email, and hearing him answer is so unusual that it doesn’t occur to me that I shouldn’t be eavesdropping until it’s too late and I already am.

I should turn and go back down the stairs, I know I should, but I’m intrigued by the fact he’s answered this time and by the razor-sharp way he answered, because Warren is a lot of things but rude isn’t one of them, and the temptation to stay put is impossible to resist.

‘Why are you phoning me?’ he barks, presumably into the receiver. ‘You know I’m useless on the phone, put it in an email.’

A pause. Of course, the problem with eavesdropping on phone calls is that you can only hear one side of them.

‘Yes, so I gathered,’ he says from upstairs. ‘Yes, I know it’s taking off, that was the point.’

A longer pause, peppered with noises of frustration on his part. ‘What?’

Another pause. Another, ‘What? Say that again?’

A, ‘Slow down!’

A muttered, ‘Well, that’s their bloody problem.’

‘Will you please talk slower?’

An endless litany of different noises of aggravation. He sounds beyond frustrated, and like he keeps starting to say something but being interrupted.

Eventually he says, ‘Whatever the problems are, email them to me. I literally cannot do this, as you well know. Goodbye.’

There’s the sound of a phone being slammed down onto the table, and another growl of annoyance at, presumably, the person on the other end who he’s hung up on.

And I realise I’m stuck. If I go back downstairs now, he’s going to hear the floorboards creaking and know I was up here listening in. And if I make myself known, he’s going to know I was up here listening in.

Honestly, the intricacies of eavesdropping should be taught in schools so nosy people know what to do when they find themselves in these situations.

I decide that head on is the best way to tackle it, and take a deep breath and force myself to run up the rest of the stairs. Maybe he’ll think I’m so fast at climbing them that I was downstairs this whole time and made it up here in three seconds flat. That’s possible, right?

Except… when I go into the kitchen, he’s sitting at the table with the Tablet of Gloom and his laptop open, his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, massaging his temples like he’s trying to stave off a headache, and I’m surprised by how harangued he looks. ‘Are you okay?’

He jumps at my unexpected arrival and lifts his head, revealing a face that looks even more exhausted than the rest of his demeanour does. ‘Yeah, fine.’

I can see the cogs in his brain turning as he mentally calculates how much I might’ve overheard, and I’m about to say something about keeping fit by running up the stairs, but he desperately looks like he needs someone to talk to, and I drop any form of act. ‘Are you in trouble?’

‘In every conceivable way.’ He answers instantly without thinking it through as he goes back to rubbing fingers across his forehead, looking like his attempts to avoid the headache are failing fast.

I could prod for more info, but I’m a firm believer that there’s nothing a cup of tea won’t make better, so I go over to put the kettle on and throw a teabag into a mug each.

His head is still in his hands and his fingers have moved on to rubbing his scalp when I put the mug of tea down in front of him and give his shoulder a squeeze to make him lift his head and slowly blink tired-looking eyes open.

Those eyes follow me as I walk round the table and take the seat opposite him, and then he looks down at the mug like he’s still trying to work out what it is.

I sit down and take a sip of my own tea and then raise the mug like I’m doing a toast, and it’s like he’s been in a world of his own because he blinks back to awareness and connects everything that’s happened in the past few minutes all at once.

He wraps both hands around the mug like he’s cold and takes a long sip.

‘Ahh, that’s good. Thank you.’ He looks over at me and shakes his head. ‘So much. You have no idea how much I needed that.’

‘I like to think one of my hidden talents is a sixth sense when it comes to tea.’

He lets out a laugh and sits upright, putting one hand on the back of his neck and rolling his head around to ease the stiffness, and when he takes another sip, he slumps down in the chair and leans backwards, letting his eyes drift shut again.

I stretch my leg out under the table until I can push at his foot with mine. ‘You can talk to me, you know.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ It’s a quiet mutter that sounds like he didn’t intend to say it out loud, and then, yet again, his brain catches up and he blinks weary eyes open and looks at me across the table and backpedals.

‘Yeah, thanks. It’s nothing. Just… my mother.

The company. Phones. I’ve got this thing where I…

I can’t…’ He stops mid-sentence and his eyes flit away from mine and focus on a cobweb in a high corner of the kitchen ceiling, and he shakes his head.

‘Nothing. That parent-child dynamic. My mother has a unique ability to make me feel like a child with one lash of her tongue. There’s nothing like having a parent as your boss to make you feel inadequate and undermined. ’

‘I’m sorry.’ I nudge his foot again with the toe of my shoe, wishing that he’d complete a sentence without abandoning it halfway through. ‘Is this because of me? Because of what we’re doing here?’

He gives me that look again, like he’s trying to see inside me and determine whether I can be trusted before he decides how much to share, and I get that all-too-familiar sense that everything he does share is strictly curtailed into the most palatable version, and not necessarily the most true version.

‘Yeah, it is.’ He eventually settles on an answer, and it sounds like an honest one.

‘This whole living exhibits thing is gaining a lot of attention. People are talking about it and my company’s on the warpath.

But you know what, if I’m going against them then maybe for the first time in my life, I’m doing something right. ’

He takes a fortifying sip of tea and his words sound fierce, but the look on his face is nowhere near as assured.

‘The attention the escaped exhibits are getting is reflecting badly on our company because we were intending to knock it down. My mother has got investors questioning our morals. One has threatened to pull out because of the potential backlash surrounding this project. Another has got a son who’s following us online and he’s threatened to cut ties with us if we were to forge ahead, and no one’s happy about the conflict of interests. ’

‘What’s the conflict of interests?’

‘I am.’

‘Oh. Right. I thought your job was to save the museum,’ I venture carefully, feeling like he’s going to realise I’m wheedling for information at any moment, because I still feel like I’m missing something about this whole situation.

‘It is. But my job and my mother’s vision don’t always align. Basically, investors aren’t happy and she’s not happy, and no one’s happy either way.’

‘But that’s a good thing, right? In terms of trying to save it, backlash from the public and especially from investors is likely to turn this around, right?’

‘Yeah.’ He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head. ‘Yeah.’

It sounds like he’s trying to convince himself, and it makes me reconsider my certainty that he’s truly on my side.

Anyone objecting to my museum being demolished has to be a good thing – at least for someone who wants it saved, and I’m once again left wondering which side of the line Warren stands on.