I can’t disagree with him there, and that’s the nice way of putting it. ‘I’m not a techy person. I don’t know the first thing about websites. I bought the domain name and used a template thingy to put some stuff about the museum in. I couldn’t afford to hire a professional.’
‘I see that.’ He types something into his phone and I catch a flash of a notes app as he presses send.
‘The Phone of Gloom is just as bad, you know. Did you just type something about me into that and send it to your own tablet?’
‘Just trying to keep all my notes together. You may not realise it, but there’s alotto do around here. Every aspect of this place needs attention. You excel at the exhibits, but… um…’ It’s like he runs out of sentence before he can get to the really insulting part, but I can see his point. Ilovethe exhibits side of Colours of the Wind. I donotlove the paperworky, admin-type tasks that come with it, and I have a tendency to put them off for an impressively long time.
‘…do not excel at other aspects?’ I offer, because he’s got a way of shining a spotlight on the things that Ishouldhave dealt with by now, and I can’t help thinking that I alreadykneweverything he’s saying but I ignored it, and maybe I’d be in a better position by now if I hadn’t.
He doesn’t confirm or deny my words, because it’s probably so obvious that it doesn’t need any concurrence. Instead, he stands up with another groan and walks out from behind the counter until he’s standing opposite me, and I take my stool back and plonk myself down on it with a huff.
He paces, twirling his phone between his hands. ‘Tell me about the empty rooms upstairs.’
Oh,joy, he’s found them. I was hoping the three locked doors on the second floor might escape his notice. ‘They used to be function rooms. I used to offer things like children’s birthday parties, a space for art and craft classes, the occasional wedding reception…’
‘But…?’
‘Well, Witt came back and he and Sadie turned the castle into a functioning destination venue. They hire rooms of the castle out to birthday parties, weddings, receptions, they offer a space for classes in the grounds, and who would want to have a function held here when they could go to the Ever After Street castle itself? It was worthwhile when the castle was a closed-down shell, but now it’s up and running again, I can’t compete with them, and I don’t have enough exhibits to fill three more rooms so…’ I trail off, unsure of how to end the sentence.
He’s stopped pacing long enough to raise an eyebrow, but he doesn’t say anything.
‘Iamtrying. They’ll be full of exhibits one day. I was thinking of moving things around. Splitting the exhibits into movie franchises rather than the princesses together, the princes together. I could divide those large rooms and have each section dedicated to a single fairytale…’
‘Or you could hold functions again. Was it profitable?’
‘It had its moments. Children’s birthday parties were a big thing, but no one wants their birthday party here nowadays when they can have it in an actual castle or in The Wonderland Teapot across the road.’
‘So you have these huge rooms of empty space just sitting there?’
‘They’re not hu?—’
‘I have the master key, Lissa. I let myself in. They’rehuge.’
I huff again. The truth is that I haven’t known what to do with the function rooms since people stopped booking them for functions. Fill them with more exhibits, certainly, but new exhibits take time and money, and filling three huge upstairs rooms is a daunting impossibility when there’s still empty space on the main floor and my focus has always been on making the downstairs halls the best they can be.
He’s quiet for a while, still pacing back and forth in front of the desk. ‘It’s easy to build a picture of what’s happened here, you know.’
‘Oh, please, do enlighten me. I can’t wait to hear the insight of someone who got here two days ago. You must knoweverythingwhen little ol’ me who’s been doing this for ten years is completely clueless.’
He chuckles at my sarcasm, but it doesn’t deter him. Instead, he comes over and leans his elbows on the desk and looks up at me through his dark eyelashes, and my breath catches for just a second. His eyes are so intensely blue and I feel like he can see right through every wall I put up. ‘You’re not invisible, but you make yourself small to accommodate others. The museum is ticking over rather than thrivingbecauseyou’re more concerned about not upsetting anyone. You have a right to make the most of your space even if it means treading on a few toes.’
I roll my shoulders, trying to ease the uncomfortable feeling because he is, once again, nottotallywrong. Idoconsider the other businesses and their owners whenever I do anything here, but it’s a mutual respect that goes both ways. My Ever After Street friends have all helped me out with the museum many times, and the last thing I want to do is undermine their shops by offering something similar. ‘We don’t do that around here. We help each other. We love each other. It might not be the most businessy way to do things, but it works for us on Ever After Street.’
‘Does it though?Isit working for you?’
‘Yes.’ I glare at him and a challenge flashes in his eyes, and I’m determined to out-stare him, but I find my cheeks turning red under his gaze and not more than a few seconds passes before I turn away, leaving him wallowing in his self-satisfied grin of winning our unofficial stare-off. ‘We’re colleagues with the same purpose, not competitors. And I’m still here, aren’t I? Still “ticking over” well enough to be in business after ten years, so I don’t geteverythingwrong.’
‘Your visitors are people who come to Ever After Street anyway and pop in for a look, whereas people should be coming to visithereand having a look at Ever After Street afterwards. This should be a destination. This place could be worth a hundred cinema complexes with a nudge in the right direction. You are by far the most interesting attraction on Ever After Street, and the others should be gaining customers from you, not the other way around.’
I’m touched by what seems like an authentic belief in my museum, and bristling at yet another hint that what I already do isn’t good enough, and also at his ability to say things that need to be said, in a way that makes them impossible to ignore. Yes, things could be better, and maybe I could have done more to make them so, and that’s not an easy thing to admit.
Before I can respond, he pushes up off his elbows so he’s grinning down at me where he’s standing and I’m sitting. ‘Do you know what I’m good at?’
‘Oh, the endless possibilities of that answer…’ I can’t help laughing to myself as I run through options in my head, and only share the least offensive one with him. ‘Suit shopping?’
He laughs. ‘Improving visibility. And that’s what we’re going to do, together. Between us, I think we can give this place exactly what it needs.’
His words give me a shard of hope and an equal sinking feeling. I want to believe him. Everything he’s said so far hasn’t been entirely unfair, and he does make some good points, but I still don’t know what he gets out of this. He’s mentioned that he’s trying to prove a point to his mother-slash-boss and take the company in a different direction, but is that really all there is to it? He’s come in like he’s the only thing standing between my business and certain doom, but is he? How can I trust him when I think that, whatever his reason for getting involved in this, I haven’t yet heard therealone?
