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From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Help again! PLEASE

Hi F,

I know I’m bothering you twice now in the same week, but doing everything in reverse DIDN’T WORK (using your caps style so you can feel how much I’m freaking out here).

I did clothes inside out, daybreak, same beach, and I really, really meant what I was saying.

The only things missing were my old purple beanie – Susie had left it at the pub – and 12 litres of Malibu.

Which I now cannot drink again as long as I live.

I totally told the magical world to take this guy back – but I had the dream again that night and so did he.

What else can I do?! I feel like I accidentally knocked over some cosmic dominoes and they’ve kept tumbling and tumbling and now they’re about to push over Stonehenge or something.

HELP. If these dreams come true . . . it would destroy our village, our way of life.

T x

P.S. The casting on the leather seems to have worked a treat, so thanks for that one. Susie says double thanks.

Temperance shut her laptop and fiddled with a frayed shirt collar she should have mended weeks ago.

Her desk was turning into more of a mountain range of mess than normal, and that was saying something.

Whenever she got a spare half hour to do some mending or patching for the shop, the usually calming, meditative stitching couldn’t compete with her inner monologue, screaming at her that she’d jinxed the village, cursed Abel and then stuffed up the one hope of reversing it all.

And inside that monologue was a tiny, squeaky voice in a right sulk saying ‘Abel’s got a girlfriend! ’

‘Obviously he does,’ she muttered to herself, picking some pins out of a little strawberry-shaped cushion and then jabbing them back in again. ‘He’s a grown man. An attractive man. Who wears a wetsuit as well as David Gandy.’

‘Did you say something?’ Stevie popped her head around the office door.

‘Just . . . running through my to-do list out loud. Sorry. Everything OK out there?’

Stevie nodded, her pixie cut gelled into cute spikes today and working with her baggy denim overalls, undone on one shoulder. Some thick nineties R‘n’B vibes going on, and Stevie really carried it off.

‘I’m going to take my break soon, if that works. And I thought, when I come back, I might get into there.’ She waggled her fingers towards the tiny drawers at the far wall, where the Mollands kept all their dried flowers and herbs.

‘What? Why?!’

‘There are a few pieces at the front – that big orange faux fur and a couple cord skirts on the right rail there – that I noticed the other day were giving off a bit of,’ she wrinkled her nose, ‘very slight mustiness.’ She held up her hands.

‘Which is not an attack. You really have the sweetest-smelling vintage shop of all time. But those are giving off a tiny whiff, so I thought I’d do my bit and give them one of your patented lavender baths. ’ She smiled sweetly.

‘No!’

Temperance had had a crush on that mega bright seventies orange fur nearly her whole life.

Not only did it look the coolest, but when you put it on you felt its almost chemical, magical burst of joy and the sense of what a treat it was to be alive.

It made you want to spin on your tip-toes, belt out ‘Groove is the Heart’ and throw some serious shapes, whether you were on a dance floor or just at the butcher’s.

Just as they’d always called Stevie’s catsuit Frederica, this coat had always been a Cassandra to her.

There was no way she was going to let Stevie accidentally wash any of Cassandra’s power away.

Temperance had never told Susie or even her mum this, but she harboured a secret plan to buy that coat from the shop should she ever fall actually REALLY properly in love, and wear it to leave her wedding reception in.

She just knew it would look so awesome with a short cocktail-style wedding dress and crisp white Converse.

The only problem would be keeping Cassandra unsold in the shop that long.

And finding the actual love of her life, of course.

Temperance stammered, ‘It’s . . . uh . .

. you know, these seventies synthetic fibres.

So delicate. They’ve got dry cleaning instructions like they’re written in Klingon.

I always worry if we get them wet they’ll just disintegrate into nothing.

’ She saw a crease appearing on Stevie’s forehead, as if the fib was trying and failing to get into her brain.

‘But how about,’ her eyes scanned her cluttered desk, landing on an old Liberty handkerchief that she’d been thinking about reusing for patches, seeing as it had a cigarette burn in one corner, ‘we use this.’ Temperance grabbed it and made for the little drawer that she knew contained dried lavender heads.

She plonked a handful of those into the handkerchief, dragged the hair bobble out of her bun and used it to tie it up into a mini parcel.

‘Plonk this in a coat pocket. Fanny’s your aunt. A subtle sweet smell.’

Stevie tipped her head to one side, looking first at the ratty little lavender bag and then at her friend. Her forehead was still creased. ‘If you say so. I’ll see you in an hour, Tee.’

Temperance felt bittersweet about her new friend casually usually her nickname after only a week or so of working together.

She loved that she’d got to know Stevie so fast, that they had their equally strong love of vintage fashion to bond them, that Stevie was clearly a ‘Yes, and’ person, up for a last-minute fancy dress party and rummaging about in a store as well organised as an over-shaken snow globe.

But she also felt guilty that she had to keep Stevie at arm’s length at times – denying her very sensible suggestions to remerchandise the shop or deal with slightly stale smells.

But what choice did she have? Their family magic was sacred, it needed sheltering from prying eyes and sinister assumptions.

There was only so close Stevie could get to the Molland sisters.

Perhaps Temperance could make it up to her soon by organising a few classic English trips for the off-season, show Stevie some of the sights that made up their patchwork culture: Birmingham’s delicious curry mile, a raucous Brighton drag show, the breathtaking feat of Hadrian’s Wall.

There might be things she absolutely couldn’t share with Stevie, but Temperance could definitely help her new friend get closer to her mum’s heritage.

Temperance decided to make up some flower cocktails for the next batch of clothes that needed treatment from the estate sale boxes, so she’d be ready to go once the shop was closed for the night and her witchy tasks began.

A generous scoop of lavender, another of rosemary and then a delicate smattering of the dried yellow rue leaves.

They were small, but they were mighty at drawing out lingering heartache.

Twelve years ago, Lee had run right through her rue supply when she had to wash the misery out of Temperance’s tear-stained duvet.

That had been one for the record books, she’d said at the time, trying to find any small glimmer of humour for her crushed daughter. Without much luck.

Temperance added each kind of flower to a paper bag with a heavy sigh.

There had been so many happy garments within the same box that housed the powerful wedding dress and silk robe.

So many breadcrumbs on the trail of a joyful life well lived.

But at the very bottom of that box, thrown in without any hint of being folded, were two black dresses and one charcoal grey suit.

Not that old, not much noticeable wear and tear and beautifully made by some luxury brands.

But from the first touch, Temperance could fully understand why they had been given away.

She and Susie had already taken care of a black silk shirt, which must have originally been part of one of these funeral outfits, when they washed on the beach the other day.

The clothes were all heavy with grief, the weight of things unsaid, of empty, stony hearts.

The grown-up children of the fabulous wedding dress lady, Temperance assumed, devastated to face a world without her.

When she had floated the garments from the box and stilled herself to tune into their memories, Temperance had seen a picture of huge floral displays, but ones that brought no joy.

The soft close of a shiny black car door.

Heavy velvet curtains closing with a coffin just visible behind.

And then even more heartache at empty drawers and wardrobes, a once-loved garden now abandoned to weeds.

She could well imagine how eager the family would have been to peel off the dark clothes they only now associated with her loss and never see them again.

I guess it’s the yin and yang of life , Temperance thought to herself as she carefully folded over the top of the bag and laid it on the windowsill. You can’t create that much love without it leaving a huge footprint. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad. It’s a risk to love that big.

The little bronze bell over the shop door tinkled again – Stevie must have forgotten something.

Temperance decided to lift the mood in her heart. ‘Left your sexy catsuit behind, Unikitty?’ she called, but Stevie stayed quiet. Maybe Temperance had pushed her away one too many times earlier.

She jogged through to the shopfloor, not finding a unikitty but a decidedly bad fairy instead.

‘Oh. Abel. ’

He dropped the sleeve of the orange fur coat as if it had singed his fingers. ‘Hey.’

The silence was a wedge between them.

‘Anything I can help you with?’ Temperance asked at last.

His jaw tightened. ‘Yes. I’m after purple.’

‘Purple?’ She looked him up and down – black jeans, black T-shirt, hair still damp from another surf, maybe. A surprising styling choice, but a sale was a sale.