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Temperance’s go-to outfit on a bad morning was always the same: her mum’s denim miniskirt from her student days, with an acid house smiley-face patch sewn on the back pocket, and a Grateful Dead tour T-shirt that she’d mended years ago, turning the ragged hem into a tie-up option instead.

When she pulled on the skirt she could always feel a young Lee and her bright, shiny optimism at going away to Bristol Uni – the tour T-shirt vibrated with nothing but good times and hedonism.

Temperance was hoping she could hide in other people’s positivity today, until, by osmosis, she felt just a tiny fleck of her own.

Clothes still holding onto happy memories could put a spring in your step, just as clothes cloaked in misery could leave you dragging your feet.

She had a great big pile of new stock that needed to be assessed and sorted.

Temperance could hide in work, at least. Even if her heart was a dry husk of a thing, she had other people’s stories to distract her.

As she stomped over the green, around The Piglet Café and to their lean-to shop next door, Temperance’s head was already calculating how many garments the two massive cardboard boxes were likely to turn up, and how on earth they were going to find room on the rails for it all.

Stock hadn’t been moving as quickly as usual this year.

It was true that the summer was only just beginning and so their busiest months were yet to come, but they’d normally have a steadier balance between the old coming in and the still-old-but-lovingly-restored going out.

It was starting to worry Temperance in the sleepless hours, when she’d exhausted the topic of being alone forever, her withered corpse being picked over by seagulls and it not even making the Prawle Reporter .

She let herself into the shop, expertly chucking her keys across the room and into an upturned top hat behind the till.

‘Steady!’

‘Christ, Mum, you scared me!’ Temperance felt her heartbeat in her ears. ‘What are you doing here? I’m pretty sure I’m opening up today.’

Lee stood up from the barstool by the sales desk and brushed off her black jeans. ‘It is, but I wanted to bring you this and tidy up a few bits of paperwork.’ She pushed a Piglet takeaway cup towards her daughter.

‘Hang on,’ Temperance looked down at the cup and the paper bag next to it. ‘A coffee and a bacon bap that isn’t from home? When you always say Matt’s prices are a rip-off only fit for the grockles?’

‘Sshh!’ Lee’s steely grey eyebrows lowered.

She’d gone fully grey at twenty-five, the same week she discovered she was pregnant with Temperance, and had never thought to dye her hair.

Instead, she embraced the layered tones of silver, slate and white that now ran through her long hair, and it offset her grungy dress sense perfectly.

‘You know these walls are basically cardboard – he’ll hear you! Can’t I treat you every now and then?’

It seemed to Temperance that her mother was about as skilled at hiding her ulterior motives as her sister was.

Twice in one morning she’d been showered with gifts of hot drinks (though, luckily, not literally) and she’d put good money that this piping hot flat white was just an obvious a bribe as Susie’s tea had been.

She spoke in just above a whisper: ‘You could just as easily have made me this in our kitchen and walked it over. What gives?’

Lee folded her arms over her black-and-white striped T-shirt. ‘Nope. You are wearing your classic “Help me, I’m doomed!” outfit, so you tell me first: what’s up with you? You can’t claim they’re just clothes , Temp, we both know that’s never true. Tell me: I can help.’

Temperance powered up the till. ‘Honestly, it’s no big deal. Just a bad date. Another bad date. Life goes on, right?’ She gulped down some coffee and tried not to wince as it scorched her throat.

‘Oh, my little water parsnip, I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?’

‘Only if our family powers can also exorcise bad memories from your head, rather than just your jeans.’

Lee came around and hugged her daughter. ‘Sorry, no. Just threads. But I can give what you were wearing the once-over, if you like? At least then a good cardi isn’t wasted on a disappointing man. Too many have been, in my experience.’

Temperance tidied the pens into their pot and checked the till roll. ‘Already put it in for a soak. Soon there will be no more bad date energy. I’m over it.’ She gave a flat kind of smile. ‘So that’s my news winkled out of me. Do I have to get a chip fork to extract yours?’

Lee drummed her short, bright red nails on the glass counter.

Underneath the glass were things she had rescued from pockets over the years: a bus ticket from 1973, half a handwritten best man’s speech (luckily any filthy jokes had been lost with the top half), a Hello Kitty scrunchie, one sage green knitted baby bootie and coins from every corner of the globe.

Lee had started this mini museum to the lost and found, and over the years her daughters had slipped in seashells they liked or ‘Good Effort’ stickers from school.

Nothing had been edited or removed: it was life in a snapshot. Small, messy, important.

‘I do have a bit of news, as it goes. Something good for me. And good for you, too.’

But Temperance could see her mum’s face wasn’t exactly beaming at this double bubble of goodness. If anything, she had a slight grey shadow under each eye and had forgotten her trademark lipstick this morning.

‘Ohh-kay,’ she said tentatively.

‘The film contract I was offered. That was supposed to start in October? They’ve brought it forward,’ Lee said, calmly.

The offer to help kit out a movie’s wardrobe with genuine sixties and seventies pieces had been too good to turn down, even if it meant working abroad – in Germany – for six months.

‘To when?’

Lee went on as if she hadn’t heard Temperance question. ‘You and Susie can run this place without me, easy. Standing on your heads. And I’ve, um, found you some help for the summer.’

Before the words ‘help for the summer’ had fully entered Temperance’s brain, the chime above the shop door gave its sweet little tinkle as a short, sunny girl with a bleached blonde pixie cut strolled in.

‘Am I too early?’ she asked in an American accent. ‘I know you said 10:15 but I just couldn’t wait!’

‘No, you’re right on time. Temperance, this is Stevie. Stevie – Temperance, my daughter. Welcome to Try Again!’

The young woman let out a squeal and jumped up and down on the spot.

‘I can’t believe it! I’m in total heaven right now!

’ She rushed up to the counter and planted her hands on the glass, leaving delicate but steamy prints.

‘I love vintage. I breathe vintage. I wish I was vintage!’ she laughed at her own joke, but even Temperance had to admit it was pretty charming.

Lee looked between the two women like they were two dogs meeting in the park and she wasn’t sure which one would misbehave first, either through overexcitement or bad temper.

‘As my timeline changed and I knew we’d need another pair of hands, I put a message out with my old art school society.

Stevie is doing a sandwich year at Bristol and she came down here the next day for the interview. I could hardly stop her!’

‘Um, right. When was this interview?’

‘Last night. At the pub!’ Stevie jumped in. ‘God, I love it there. Do you know they have this whole basket of knitting that you can just pick up and carry on with?’

Temperance nodded. ‘I’ve lived next door to that pub my whole life. I started some of that knitting at my tenth birthday party, I think.’

Stevie hooted with laughter, as if Temperance had just told an adorable joke when, in fact, her tenth birthday was attended by two school friends and half of the local WI, who pronounced her a natural knitting talent.

A woolly progeny. She didn’t know then that a gift with threads and fibres went way beyond anything normal in her.

Temperance would find that out on her seventeenth birthday. Still in the pub, of course.

‘We’re pretty remote here,’ Temperance went on, guardedly. ‘Off the beaten track. There’s not much in the way of cutting-edge fashion for a design student.’

The American pressed her tiny hands to her heart. ‘It’s been my dream to have a real English adventure. My mom was English, you see. I’m kind of digging into my roots this year, getting to know the places she knew. She passed when I was ten, so partly I’m doing this for her.’

‘God, I’m so sorry,’ Temperance rushed out, as Lee rubbed the young woman’s arm gently.

‘Ah, it’s OK. It was a long time ago and also it was yesterday, you know?

But she loved clothes and she loved the English coast. So here I am.

And I’m about as in love with that ocean view as I am the clothes you’ve got.

So it couldn’t be more perfect. The way you’ve styled that Laura Ashley maxi dress with a biker jacket in the window.

Ooof,’ she rolled her eyes like she’d just dived into a pool of chocolate fondant. ‘Perfection.’

Temperance felt the tips of her ears glow. ‘Thank you. I did that one. I liked the clash of traditionally feminine and masculine.’

‘That’s exactly it! And I’m not a design student, by the way: I study history. Specifically, the cultural history of fashion. These things are so my . . . my cup of tea.’ She beamed.

Temperance felt her hackles drop in the glow of Stevie’s smile.

But there was a very solid reason why she was wary of anyone new coming behind the desk at Try Again: this wasn’t just a vintage store, this was a vintage store where she and her family used their unique Molland magic on a daily basis.

If a piece had only positive memories attached to it, the women mostly let it be, but would mend any tears or replace missing buttons so it was back to a saleable standard.

But if they held a garment that gave them flashes of rage or heartbreak or jealousy, it would need a very different sort of repair.

A sort that no outsider would understand.

Because if those negative energies were left to fester, they would then influence the next person to wear them, keeping a perpetual whirl of misery and pain spinning through their life.

Temperance had grown up seeing how people laughed at modern-day ‘witches’, how they mucked about with tarot cards in her sixth form common room, falling about with hysterical laughter.

And she knew enough about English history to realise that sometimes jokes and jibes turned cruel, vindictive.

Poisonous. No matter the age you lived in, a woman with power was always a target.

Lee had been very clear with each of her daughters when they turned seventeen and their talents came to the surface: ‘We keep our family secret in the family . No one else will understand. It’s our gift and we need to treasure it, to nurture it.’

What went on in the back room of Try Again, stayed in the back room of Try Again.

And now her mother was inviting an outsider in?! To poke about in their work room, to snoop on their secrets?

As if she could sense Temperance’s heart rate starting to vibrate like a hummingbird’s, Lee added, ‘Stevie’s role will mostly be out on the shopfloor here, keeping it tidy and well stocked.

And maybe if she comes across anything particularly unique, she could list it online for us?

We’ve been talking about an eBay shop for ages, so she could take that on. ’

‘Buying and selling vintage for a profit helped me buy my plane ticket out here,’ Stevie shrugged sheepishly .

Lee sighed with a smile. ‘I think you two are going to have a great summer. You’ll hardly miss me at all.’ She squeezed her daughter’s hand. ‘And I’m always on the end of the phone, of course. But right now, I’d better get packing.’

‘Wait, what? What – wait . . . when are you going?’

Lee briefly bit her lip. ‘Tonight.’

Stevie’s gaze flicked from Temperance to Lee and back again like it was the Ladies’ Final at Wimbledon. ‘I’ll, uh, take a slow tour of your denims, give you some privacy.’

Once she was twelve feet away at the front of the shop, Lee turned to her daughter, ‘I know it’s sudden, Temps, but I’m hardly Home Alone -ing you. I know you’re capable of this. Haven’t you ever imagined running the shop yourself one day? Without me?’

Temperance had always seen her future with her feet planted where they were right now: her Birkenstocks nestled into the slight groove in the lino that had been worn down by her mum’s DMs and the shoes of Matt’s dad before them, the original proprietor of Bob’s Baits, as it was then.

She definitely wanted to run this place one day, but her visions of that future always had Lee somewhere just out of sight in the background.

Not bouncing in a Berlin electro nightclub and swanking about with movie people.

‘I suppose.’

Lee pushed a slip of paper across the desk to her daughter. ‘Take this. It’s the email for someone in the know, for any magical emergencies that crop up and you can’t get hold of me. I don’t know how much travelling I’ll be doing. But just for real emergencies, mind?’

Temperance picked up the paper like it was a holy relic – she’d never heard her mum reference anyone else with the same magical know-how as them before.

Lee had never spoken badly about her family over the years, but Temperance and Susie had been told enough to know that there’d been a big, unrepairable rift just before Temperance was born.

This was the closest Temperance had ever come to having a clue to her mum’s past. She put it carefully in the till drawer.

‘But I doubt you’ll need it,’ Lee went on. ‘I’m only a few hours away by plane. It’s good for the shop that I can build some new contacts. Who knows, I might find us some great new sources for stock there.’

‘Maybe,’ Temperance forced herself to see the shop half-full with her as the manager, rather than half-empty without her mum. ‘It might be interesting to wash away a German heartbreak for a change. I just hope I can understand those ones.’

Lee shook her head gently. ‘Heartbreak doesn’t have a language, my darling. It’s universal.’