Page 8 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museum

He goes to protest, but I muster the sternest look in my artillery that’s frightening enough to cut his protest off before it’s begun, learned from many years of getting boisterous kids to put down fragile exhibits without needing to say a word.

‘You want to get to know this museum, and this is a huge part of it. Indulge me. Your heart’s greatest desire.

Write a real wish on this piece of paper, fold it up, and drop it down the well. ’

He gives me a doubtful look, but reluctantly takes the blue paper, thinks for a moment before he writes something down, folds the paper, and pokes it through the grid so it floats down into the darkness of the well.

‘Happy?’ He hands the pen back.

I snatch it from him and put it back in the weatherproof box. ‘Rapturous.’

He laughs at my deadpan tone, and gives the wishing well a final mistrustful glance before turning to head back inside.

‘Right, let’s start down here,’ he says once I’ve caught up with him in the lobby where he’s already consulting the Tablet of Gloom again. ‘There’s a Princess Suite, a Prince Suite, and a Fairytale Homes hall?’

I beckon for him to follow me, and push open the door of the Princess Suite, a large hallway where most of the exhibits relating to our favourite fairytale main characters are gathered.

‘Wow.’ He lets out a low whistle. ‘What is going on in here?’

‘This is the Tangled corner.’ I point out the area just inside the door where the golden sun crest is on a custom-made shaped rug on the floor, and in the centre stands a mannequin wearing a pink dress and a floor-length wig of blonde plaited hair with flowers woven into it, and the mannequin is reaching up, releasing a paper lantern into an installation of floating lanterns that I’ve managed to wire together to look like they’re suspended in mid-air.

I’ve got the golden glowing lanterns hanging from the beams on wire of differing lengths, so it looks like they’re floating all the way across the ceiling and flickering with LED tealights to create a magical atmosphere in the hall.

‘One of my sisters is a wonderful artist so the wall of the Tangled corner has been painted with a replica of what Rapunzel paints on the walls of her tower – her dream of herself watching the floating lights – and on the mannequin’s shoulder sits a clay model version of Pascal, her pet chameleon.

And look, there’s a little speaker down here and if you press the button, it plays an instrumental version of “I See the Light”.

’ I hold my hand out, encouraging him to press it, and when he does, the music fills the room and he leans closer to the speaker, looking like he’s either straining to hear it or he just doesn’t want to. ‘Cool, right?’

He gives me a blank shrug and I can’t help feeling disappointed.

After his suggestions in the garden, I had a tiny bit of optimism that he would get it, and maybe he’d have other suggestions for how we can pep this place up.

Tangled is one of my favourite Disney movies and getting my littlest sister involved in creating this corner makes it even more special, and there’s a part of me that really wanted him to understand that.

‘And this is Moana with her boat.’ I go across to another area where there’s a traditional Polynesian canoe that had to be disassembled to get in the door and then reassembled once inside.

The mannequin is dressed in Moana’s orange top and white skirt, there’s a soft toy version of her pet pig and chicken, and people can sit in the boat alongside her for a photo opportunity.

I lift the necklace from the mannequin to show him and then open it up and take out the metallic green stone.

‘And this is her necklace. It’s a giant shell that opens and inside is the heart of Te Fiti, which she carries across the ocean to restore to the island. ’

‘Ah, hang on. This “heart of Te Fiti” thing is mentioned in my reports.’ He consults the Tablet of Gloom again. ‘According to this, it’s been stolen six times so far this year.’

‘We don’t know that it’s been stolen, it’s gone missing. There’s a difference.’

He reaches over and lifts the green stone out of my hand and holds it up to the light. ‘Yes. The perfect size to “go missing” in the pockets of many little thieves and souvenir hunters.’

‘I make it out of oven-baked clay and paint it with metallic green paint. I have another two at home ready to replace whenever this one disappears. It’s a bit demoralising, but I value it being realistic, and Moana’s stone isn’t superglued into the necklace in the film.’

‘You’re enabling children to steal! And wasting your own time and money for the fun of it. There has to be a better solution to this.’

‘Well, I’m not putting up signs saying “don’t nick the heart of Te Fiti”, that’s openly telling my customers that I think the worst of them!

’ I say, even though I’m touched by his protectiveness of the exhibits, and I like his ability to face problems head on.

He is right, but if there’s a better solution then I haven’t thought of it yet.

‘If they weren’t such immoral little thieves, you wouldn’t need to think the worst of them.’

‘Most of them are under seven years old! You can’t call children immoral thieves! What next? Strip searches upon leaving and metal detectors on the doors?’

‘Now there is a good idea.’ His face brightens and I’d like to think he’s joking, but I don’t think he is.

‘And parents do bring stuff back sometimes. They’ve come in looking ashamed and guiltily handed me back something, saying, “I’m so sorry, my son walked out with this. I had no idea.”’

‘And those parents would be the exception, not the rule. Most people are not that decent. Most people would keep it as a trophy or it’s the parents themselves who steal it.’

‘Do you have such an exceptionally low opinion of everyone or is it just people associated with this museum?’

‘No one’s ever asked me that before.’ He looks up at the lanterns hanging above our heads and chews his lip, giving it some thought. ‘Yes, I suppose I do really. I’ve never thought of it like that.’

I should probably be annoyed at his cynicism, but he looks unexpectedly downbeat, and it strikes me as a bit sad. It seems like his front has dropped for a moment, and I’m intrigued by the shift in his demeanour.

He shakes himself and consults the Tablet of Gloom yet again. ‘And there’s something about a Lego model of Agrabah palace being broken by children fighting with Rapunzel’s frying pan?’

‘It wasn’t broken, it was… temporarily deconstructed, and I put it back together again.

The owner was fine about it. No harm done.

’ I don’t tell him about the sleepless nights, endless phone calls to the Lego collector who’d lent Colours of the Wind his Disney palaces collection, printed downloads of instructions, and help from at least three other Ever After Street shopkeepers to get the palace looking as good as new again after the unfortunate frying pan incident.

It’s another one of those demoralising things where I wish parents would keep an eye on their children and not let them run wild, but I feel helpless to do anything about it, and a stern look can only go so far.

He turns back to the Tangled area and lifts a frying pan down from a display hook on the wall and waves it towards me. ‘Why are there frying pans here?’

‘It’s a thing from the film. If you’d seen Tangled, you’d understand.’

‘I’m an adult man,’ he says again, sounding like he thinks I’ve failed to notice.

‘Only men who are threatened in the masculinity department are afraid to watch Disney movies.’

‘Or men who just don’t like them.’

‘No one dislikes Disney movies. They are timeless and ageless.’

‘Okay, people who simply aren’t interested in them then.

If I sit in front of my TV to relax and switch off for a while, some cutesy cartoon for children is not my first choice of viewing material.

Each to their own and all that. You can like them and I can not be interested in watching them and we can still co-exist peacefully. Who knew, eh?’

All right, that’s a fair point, and ‘each to their own’ is one of my main mottos in life, but no one really dislikes Disney movies.

‘I didn’t mean it like that, but you’re being judgemental when you haven’t even seen one.

People of all ages and all genders enjoy Disney movies, and it’s narrow-minded to suggest you won’t enjoy one because you’re—’

‘A demonic gerbil with no soul?’ He interrupts me to offer it as such a polite suggestion that it makes me laugh.

I meet his eyes across the room, and there’s a glimmer of something much warmer about him, and I’m intrigued by another peek behind the front I saw earlier.

He seems much more down-to-earth than his standoffish facade has led me to believe so far today.

Maybe working with him won’t really be so bad, even though I’m filled with misgivings and reservations too.

‘We don’t all have to like the same thing, but you reckon you can overhaul a museum that you have zero understanding of.

You’re not best placed to be involved here. ’

‘I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t have children.

I don’t have siblings so there are no nieces and nephews.

I don’t have an extensive family with gazillions of little cousins.

I’ve drifted apart from friends who have children because our lives are on different paths.

If I’ve ever watched a Disney movie in my life, it’s before I was old enough to remember.

That doesn’t mean I can’t see the potential here from a business perspective, and it seems like your passion is enough to drag us both through kicking and screaming, so can we get on with it?

You explain what I need to know and I’ll ask if anything doesn’t make sense – deal? ’