Page 37 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museum

At least the second house has got a wall, and a creaky gate that announces our arrival like a Tannoy system, and a dog inside that starts barking instantly.

Warren insists on taking the package to the door again, so I crouch behind the wall and watch as he runs up the path, presses the doorbell, and I can’t help giggling at how much the barking dog makes his pace quicken as he flails out of the gate and scrambles into a hiding spot beside me just as the door opens and a little boy comes out, picks up the package with an ‘Oooooooooh!’ and takes it back inside.

‘Not gonna lie, I hoped he was going to open it and try it on right there and then.’

‘Why, so you could compare capes?’ I tug his playfully where it’s starting to unravel from the knot hiding his face.

‘Mine is better, obviously.’ He leans down to whisper to me. ‘I’ve always thought capes were more becoming on people who are thirty-something years too old to wear them.’

I’m fighting off an increasingly familiar urge to hug him again. How could an evil gerbil with no soul turn out to be this adorable?

We’re on the right side of the house for a quick getaway, but the curtains are open and the lights are on in the living room, and within minutes, we’re able to see the boy inside, zooming around with the cape flapping behind him and an excitable Labrador jumping up at him, barking loudly, and probably wondering what the heck is going on.

‘Best night ever.’ Warren pushes himself up and holds a hand out to pull me up too, and even though I’m quite capable of getting up from a crouching position on my own, I give in to the temptation to touch him again.

He doesn’t let go until we get safely out of sight and drop hands to pull our face coverings down. As soon as his cape is back to being over his shoulders, he holds his hand out again and I take it instantly.

He walks beside me this time, swinging our hands between us, but we’re both meandering, wandering slowly, putting off heading back towards the museum because that will mean saying goodnight and not holding his hand any longer.

‘I don’t want to go back to work,’ he says eventually. ‘Can we just stay out here giving presents to kids all night?’

‘I’d like that, but we’re all out of nearby wishes.

’ As I say it, my eyes fall on a streetside hot drinks van at the edge of a park, and I nudge him to look in the right direction.

‘However, we could reward ourselves with a hot drink and take the scenic route through the park… If you weren’t in any rush to get back. ’

‘You had me at hot drink on a cold autumn night… It’s freezing out here. Someone needs to teach Disney princes to wear scarves and warm coats.’

We left in such a hurry that he hasn’t got his wallet with him, which gives me free rein to choose the most autumnal drink possible, and I order us a Black Forest hot chocolate each, and we head through the iron gates of the park and meander along a leaf-strewn path in comfortable silence.

‘It’s going to get worse as you get older?’ I say eventually, and he groans.

‘When we agreed to leave it “for now”, what I really meant was “for forever”.’ He automatically knows I’m talking about his hearing and I’m pretty sure he knew I was never going to leave it very long before questioning him again, and he probably would have refused the drink if he really minded.

He sips his hot chocolate and looks over at me contemplatively. ‘If you hadn’t just bought me the most autumnal drink of all time, I’d tell you to shut up.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’ His laugh turns into a long sigh.

‘It has got worse as I’ve got older, I know that.

When I was in my twenties, apart from a few rounds of vertigo, it barely made an impact on my life, but now I’m in my forties, the hearing in my left ear has slowly declined, and there’s no cure, nothing that can improve things. ’

‘What about hearing aids?’

‘I’d have to retire first because my mother would sack me for coming to work with a hearing aid in my ear.’

I don’t realise my mouth has fallen open until a moth nearly flies straight in. I bat it away, but I feel like I’ve missed a part of that sentence and it doesn’t make sense without the missing part. ‘You can’t be serious.’

He does a noncommittal shrug, and we pass a bench surrounded by piles of crispy leaves, and I reach out to grab his hand again and pull him over to it. ‘Sit. Unpack that for me.’

He raises an eyebrow.

‘Please?’

He’s trying not to smile as he lets me drag him the few steps across the grass and push him down onto the wooden bench.

‘It’s a weakness, Liss.’ His foot kicks at one of the leaf piles collected around the base of it.

Goosebumps break out across my body and I reach over and take his hand. ‘No, it’s not. Surely you make it into a weakness by pretending you can hear when you can’t.’

‘I can hear, I’ve just got reduced hearing in my left ear. It’s usually fine, but it becomes noticeable if there are a lot of people, or background noise, or loud music playing or something. It’s not a big deal.’

If there’s one thing I know about someone who tries so hard to keep it hidden, it’s that it’s a much bigger deal than he’s letting on.

‘I have a disability,’ he says eventually, focusing intently on a brown leaf blowing along the path in front of us rather than looking at me.

‘Do you know how hard it is to admit that? And to wear a hearing aid would be to show that. Everyone I encounter, every day, would know, instantly. You can’t begin to imagine what that would be like. ’

‘No, admittedly, I can’t, but many people can. Many people overcome disabilities of every sort, every day, and are stronger for it.’

‘I’m not many people. In my family, a disability is a failing, a failing equals failure, and failure is weakness.

Any form of weakness is unacceptable. In my world, weakness makes you the most likely to be picked off and ripped to shreds, like those wildlife programmes you see where a gang of cheetahs surround a herd of wildebeest and attack only the weakest calf.

You don’t put your failings on show for all to see – you hide them. ’

Despite the tangent into David Attenborough territory, it hurts to hear the disdainful way he talks about himself.

It’s the kind of attitude that makes me wonder about his mother, and how anyone can grow up feeling like a disability should be hidden and masked, rather than doing something that might improve it.

‘Weakness is human. Everyone is different. Everyone has many forms of abilities and disabilities. None of us know what people we encounter in our everyday lives are going through, but everyone is overcoming something. Wearing a hearing aid wouldn’t make you any less of a person. ’

‘It would make me less of an opponent. It would give my opposition something to pick up on and take advantage of. A way to undermine me. A weakness they can chip away at. If anyone knew I had a problem with my hearing, they could hold it over me. They could use it to gain their own advantage. People could create issues or lie about things that have been said and blame it on me for mishearing. I have a lot of board meetings. I wine and dine a lot of investors. I have property disputes that I have to win. I must appear sharp and on the ball, and I can’t let people think there’s something inferior about me. ’

I sigh. ‘Does your life have to be about nothing but opponents and opposition? Fighting, winning, losing, failing. Can’t you just… live?’

He meets my eyes again and holds my gaze. ‘You… this place… it makes me wish I could.’

He sounds surprised by the words, like he didn’t intend them to come out quite so vehemently, and he takes another sip of his drink and looks away, his eyes distant and his mind clearly anywhere but here.

The wind and the cape have knocked his dark hair loose and it’s blown wild by the wind and looking gorgeously dishevelled for a change, rather than held down by styling product, and it’s incredibly hard not to reach over and stroke my fingers through it.

He looks over his shoulder at me. ‘Would you have treated me differently if you’d noticed a hearing aid in my ear?

On that first day, when I had to come in and take over your museum and present myself as confident and in charge and make sure you knew there was no choice?

Would it have made you see me in a different light?

Would you have felt the slightest bit of pity? Shown me extra kindness because of it?’

‘No. But I would have been more mindful that you couldn’t hear everything exactly the same way I could.’

‘Of my limitations, you mean.’

I go to deny it but the words stop halfway, because I can see his point, and yet… ‘But part of your limitations is not being able to hear clearly, and if a hearing aid would improve that, then you’d be in a stronger position anyway.’

‘But everyone would know I had an impairment.’

‘But it would be less of an impairment.’

He huffs like he can see my point too. ‘My mother would not allow me to continue running our Midlands branch if I put my impairment on show for all to see. Hearing aids are for elderly people. It’s something I’ll look into when I retire.’

‘You’re forty-one! You’re not retiring for another twenty-something years.

’ It makes my thoughts return to his mother again.

Him at twenty-two, diagnosed with something that he must’ve known would have a big impact on his life.

If she was the only person he opened up to, I can’t imagine how any parent could encourage him to hide it, to be embarrassed, and treat it as something shameful.

Those are the kind of shackles that are hard to shrug off, even so many years later.

I try a different angle. ‘You must have meetings with serious, scary businessmen who wear glasses all the time. Glasses are an aid to an impairment, no different to a hearing aid. Do their glasses make you think any less of them?’

‘Glasses are more socially acceptable. Hearing aids in a man my age are an anomaly, something people would notice. Not the norm.’

‘Be the change you want to see in the world. Change the norm.’

‘You’re the type of person who can do that.

I’m not. I’m just a shy bullied kid who goes through every week desperately trying to come out unscathed at the end of it, without having to explain intensely personal things about myself to strangers who would undoubtedly feel entitled to ask.

’ He sits back and looks over at me. ‘I appreciate you trying to help, but we’re from different worlds, and mine isn’t like yours. ’

No wonder he’s struggling to find any meaning in life. He sounds so defeated, completely and utterly fed up of every little thing, and the urge to hug him is unreal.

‘I’m sure they make incredibly discreet ones these days.

Technology has advanced so much that they’re no longer the squealing brown things that everyone’s granddad was always fiddling with.

’ I know I’m probably pushing too hard, but this feels like something that would make his life so much better if he was open to it.

‘If you wanted to try it while you’re here, while you don’t have to go into the office and face your horrible “opponents”…

’ I do the air quotes because, admittedly, I don’t know much about his job, but it sounds awful.

‘If you could get fitted for a hearing aid, being here could be an opportunity to try it out and see how much it would help… No one on Ever After Street would think less of you. If they knew you like I know you, they’d like you for exactly who you are, and there is nothing in your ear that would make the slightest difference to that. ’

‘I believe that.’ He pushes a hand through his hair, looking like even the thought has made him nervous. ‘I already have one but I’ve never been brave enough to wear it. Maybe I’ll give it some thought.’

‘And if anyone was to say anything, they’ll have me to deal with. I have Rapunzel’s frying pan and I’m not afraid to use it.’

He laughs so hard that he throws his head back against the bench, the lines around his eyes crinkling up as he rolls his head to look at me. ‘I think you might be the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.’

I expect him to turn serious and sit up, but he stays as he is, holding my gaze, and instead holds the hot chocolate cup up and examines the writing on the side.

‘Are we sure this hot chocolate isn’t spiked with alcohol?

I didn’t mean to say that. I meant, um… I’m going to have to watch Tangled now, aren’t I? ’

‘One of my favourites. We could watch it together…’

There’s something about his smile when it’s so completely unfiltered, spontaneous, and like a burst of sunshine on a dark autumn night, and I wring my empty cup between my fingers to keep them occupied, which might be the only thing preventing me from reaching over and dragging his lips to mine.

Eventually, the chill of the night air gets to both of us and when we get up, he leans over and brushes my hair aside, and then ducks down until he can touch his lips to my forehead. ‘Thank you for not making me feel like there’s something wrong with me.’

‘I’m so sorry there’s anyone in your life who ever has. Every part of you is you, Warren. No one should be picking and choosing which bits to love. Everything about you makes you you, and you are… not a bad person to know.’

I hear his breath catch and he pushes it out shakily, and the atmosphere feels charged, like he wants to say something but can’t find the right words.

We throw our cups in a nearby bin and when he holds his arm out to me, I can’t resist slipping my hand through the crook of his elbow and tugging him close to me, and not another word needs to be said, because I think he might be the most wonderful person I’ve ever met too, and there is no ability, disability, or otherwise that could change that.