Page 48 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museum

I look up at the others. ‘I’m so sorry. I trusted him.

I trusted him over you, all of you. Everyone told me that something didn’t add up, that something about his reason for being here wasn’t quite right, and I got caught up in his eyes, and his smile, and the sense of companionship he gave me. I feel so stupid.’

They all reassure me that no one could’ve seen this coming, but I’m the one who let him in. I’m the one who shared everything with him, who opened myself up to him and truly believed that his intentions were good.

Was he nothing but a corporate plant all along? Sent here to secretly watch us and report insider information back to the company? And there was me, dishing that information out on a nice big dinner plate, like a numpty.

‘What are we going to do?’ Cleo asks. ‘Post a rebuttal?’

‘We could claim they’ve faked the footage?’ Franca suggests. ‘Say they’ve used AI to generate it or something – people would be more inclined to trust us than some slimy property developer.’

‘Yeah, exactly, we’ve just got to refute it,’ Marnie adds. ‘People will always believe the good guys.’

Are we the good guys? We have misled people.

We’ve pretended exhibits were moving when they weren’t.

We’ve used the interest to further boost our own popularity.

We’ve played up to what was being talked about to increase visitor numbers and benefitted from the increased takings.

We all know that the information on the wishes was solely to enable us to grant them, but in this world of scammers and fraudsters trying to get your personal information in any way possible, is anyone ever going to believe that?

The only thing I’m certain of is that it’s time to be honest. ‘No. No more lies. We’ll come clean.

Tell people exactly why we did it. The only way to fight accusations like these is with absolute truth.

I’ve made enough mistakes with trusting people who clearly had ulterior motives lately, and I don’t want to be one of them.

I’ll write something today, figure out how to explain it, tell people about Berrington Developments and their underhanded tactics and intimidation, but right now, I want to curl up in a hole and never come out. ’

I can feel the malaise settling over me like a heavy winter blanket.

It was all for nothing, wasn’t it? Everything that’s happened since September has been a sham.

The extra visitors make no difference, the gift shop, the excited kids finding escaped exhibits, the wishes we’ve granted, the map postcards, the new logo.

Every single thing has been for nothing.

We haven’t saved the museum… and I haven’t fallen in love.

* * *

I have no idea what to write.

When I volunteered for this earlier, it seemed so simple, but now I’m alone, standing at the front desk with the cursor blinking at me from the blank page on my laptop.

It’s been a quiet day. The others went to open their shops, and Mickey stayed until I sent her away at lunchtime, but visitors have been few and far between.

I suspect the only ones who have come are people who haven’t read social media yet, unlike me.

I’ve been torturing myself by reading the comments on Berrington Developments’ article all day, despite knowing the cardinal rule of the internet is to never read the comments.

Between that, I’ve been skulking around and checking every nook and cranny for possible other hidden devices. From their video, it seems like they only had one angle, but you can never be too careful when you’ve invited a corporate stooge into your life and trusted his every false word.

I don’t expect Warren will ever be brave enough to show his face around here again, and yet I can’t keep my eyes off the door. I keep watching, hoping… no, not hoping… Waiting, maybe. Thinking he might come in. There might be some perfectly reasonable explanation for all this.

Half of me expects him to appear, and half of me is still shocked when there’s a soft knock on the museum door and I look up from the laptop screen to see him push it open, come in, close it and turn the sign over to closed behind him.

I look at the clock on the wall and I’m surprised it’s reached 4.

55 p.m. already. Today has been the draggiest day in the history of draggy days, and I have to appreciate his timing.

He must have waited until this exact moment – right before closing time so we’d have some privacy, but before I’d had the chance to lock him out.

‘Hi,’ he murmurs. At least he has the decency to look ashamed. Very, very ashamed.

I go to say the same but the word gets stuck in my throat and all that comes out is a hoarse gurgle. I’m telling myself that at least something here mattered enough that he’d come back and try to offer an explanation, and even though I don’t really want to hear it, I’m desperate to hear it.

He’s wearing a suit again, and his shiny shoes squeak on the black and white flooring, and I can’t help the pang of seeing him looking as miserable as he did three months ago.

‘I believe this is yours.’ I bend to get the broken camera from under the counter and slam it onto the wooden desk as he comes over, and I realise I’m wishing he’d say, ‘Wait, what, I’ve never seen that before in my life, what is that?’

‘I expected it to be in more pieces than that.’ He picks it up and leans over the desk until he can drop it into the bin that he knows is underneath. ‘I can explain.’

‘No, you can’t.’ I involuntarily take a step backwards at the unexpected closeness of him leaning so far over the desk. ‘But I can explain it to you, and you jump in and tell me if I’ve got it wrong, how’s that?’

My discomfort must show because he immediately takes a step away again. His bottom teeth pull his upper lip into his mouth and he nods mutely.

‘I think Berrington Developments were worried about the public support for the museum. I think they talk the big talk, but in reality, they knew there’d be backlash they wanted to avoid, and they sent you here for insider information.

You were supposed to find out about the inner workings of the museum to see what they could exploit and feed it back to them, and you certainly did. ’

‘No, that’s wrong.’ He sighs. ‘The camera was my misplaced idea. It was personal. I got involved in the living exhibits. I wanted to prove who was behind it. It had nothing to do with them or my job here.’

‘If that was true, you would have told me. You would have, at the very least, asked permission to put up the camera. It’s illegal to film people without their consent in a private place. It breaks all sorts of privacy and data protection laws. You must’ve known that.’

‘It only ever filmed at night. It was motion-activated between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., so it only recorded when something moved between those hours. You and I had usually gone by then. I… didn’t think of it in those terms. I was just trying to catch out whoever was doing it.’

‘By illegally filming them without their consent?’ I was trying not to lose my cool, but I snap at him this time, even though the fact it only filmed at night makes me feel better.

A lot has happened between us in this lobby and I felt sordid and violated by the idea of a group of lecherous old property developers sitting around and watching some of those things, and I frantically run through anything else they might have seen at night.

‘They were breaking into a building that my company owns!’

‘They were trying to help me! Which is more than you’ve ever done!’

‘And you were lying to me! I knew you knew who was responsible. You’re a terrible liar. When you said no one else had a key, I knew that someone did. The camera was personal curiosity to prove my own theory.’

‘You think that’s an insult, but I’d prefer to be a terrible liar than a seasoned pro like you.’

‘I didn’t lie.’

‘And yet you’re lying now. Because the footage from this “personal curiosity” of yours ends up being used in the most public way to deal us the most damning amount of harm possible.

Please, Warren, don’t insult me further by pretending that installing a hidden camera and violating our privacy on behalf of your company was somehow above board and an absolutely fine thing for you to do. ’

He pushes a hand through his hair, pacing in small widths of the lobby, covering no more than a few black and white squares of the flooring before turning back the other way again.

‘I didn’t give them that footage. It uploaded automatically to my cloud account and they had access, which I didn’t know.

I didn’t know, Liss. I really didn’t know. ’

I hate how much that makes me feel just the tiniest bit better. He looks absolutely wretched as he says it, and there’s the smallest smidge of relief that maybe it wasn’t all as calculated as I thought. ‘You knew what they were going to do with it though?’

‘I found out yesterday from my mother.’

‘And what, your quick disappearing act was because you went to help? Went to ensure they had the best footage possible?’

‘I went back to the office to try and stop them, but I couldn’t. The order came from the boss, I didn’t have the authority to override it. I’m sorry.’

‘Well, that’s a nice way of trying to shirk responsibility for this, but nothing you say makes any sense. On the night we stayed here for the stakeout, for example. That camera was already up. You already knew. So what was the point in that?’

‘I was trying to catch you out. I knew that either you’d warn the others and nothing would happen, or you’d sneak something out. I was quite impressed that you managed to get an entire carpet out of the bathroom window.’

‘Are you seriously trying to make a joke of this?’

‘No. I’ve messed up, I know that. I’m trying to figure out a way to sufficiently apologise but there isn’t one, and I’m floundering.’