Chapter Six
Augustine opened the shop at precisely ten o’clock, knee-deep in pumpkins and losing an increasingly one-sided battle with autumn as she wrestled them into what she hoped might eventually resemble a tasteful seasonal window display.
She was an idiot.
She’d meant to order three large pumpkins. Three.
Somewhere between exhaustion, poor internet, and blind autumnal optimism though, she’d apparently ordered thirty extra-large ones instead, which had arrived just after opening that morning and promptly colonized half the shop.
Forget one turning into Cinderella’s carriage. These bastards were so big they looked capable of transforming into an Airbus A380.
She was still crouched by the window, gourd braced awkwardly against her hip, when her first visitor of the day appeared.
It was Mrs Clayton. It was always Mrs Clayton, although she was Barbara Clayton to those who knew her best, and Babs to her husband.
Every day without fail, the lady would pop up during Augustine’s mid-morning coffee and start a round of complaints, settling into the refurbished sofa, her embossed clutch with a dozen fake pearls stitched into the handle clasped securely in her hands.
Augustine smiled patiently, as she always did, because Mrs Clayton had been coming to her shop for as long as she could remember, and had owned it once upon a time, too, back when the building had still been the café.
“I spent my youth in this place,” Mrs Clayton had told her just after she’d opened The Priestess Reversed, a wistful fondness stealing over her face.
“Before all this touristy nonsense, when Greenwich was still London proper. Jellied eels we served. Pie and mash. Chips so deep-fried in oil you could see your reflection in them. Proper grub it was. We were the busiest café this side of the Thames. At least we were until the fire, that is.”
Augustine couldn’t help it. She liked Mrs Clayton. She never bought anything, hardly even looked at anything, but she was a stalwart of her morning routine and Augustine had grown used to the familiarity of her presence.
“Hey, Mrs C,” she said that morning, pumpkin still in hand. “How’s things? How’s Mr C? Any improvement?”
Mrs Clayton sighed. “No improvement today. I’m off to the Queen Elizabeth next to hear what the doctors have to say.”
Augustine nodded. Mrs Clayton’s husband had been felled by a heart attack a month ago, and the little old lady, still besotted and eternally in love, hardly left his side. Augustine suspected her visits to The Priestess Reversed offered her a break of sorts.
Mrs Clayton looked down, and for the first time, seemed to notice the ring of salt on the floor.
“Might want to put the pumpkins down and get out the sweeping brush, dear,” Mrs Clayton said airily, and Augustine blushed.
“Oh, I will. Just . . . later.” She gestured to the pumpkins. “I’m a little busy right now.”
“So I see. You’ll get mice in here if you aren’t careful though,” Mrs Clayton remarked, still staring critically at the floor. “Mr Clayton and I would’ve been shut down if the café had been in the state this shop often is. But then, I suppose you aren’t serving food.”
“No. Even if I wanted to serve food, there’s no kitchen here.”
“No, not any more. It was pulled out years ago. We had it over there, behind some counters,” Mrs C told her, gesturing to the far wall. “And then the customers all sat over this way, while we kept all the dry goods in there.”
“The stock room,” Augustine replied absently. At that, a thought suddenly struck her, and she put her pumpkin down, looking over at Mrs Clayton curiously. “Mrs C?”
“Mmm?”
“When this was the café, was there anything upstairs? Like a room or something?”
Mrs Clayton’s fingers began to tap against the worn leather of her clutch.
She looked nervous, the tapping of her fingers quickening with every second that passed, and Augustine felt something a little like dread build within her.
Prickles ran across her skin, and she stepped closer to the older woman.
“Mrs C?” she pressed. “Is there something upstairs?”
“Why do you ask?” Mrs Clayton suddenly returned, an edge to her voice, and Augustine frowned.
“Well, Maddy said something about a place upstairs yesterday . . . but . . . but there isn’t one. Right?”
“Right,” Mrs Clayton agreed shortly, but her eyes flickered across the shop to the tall bookcase against the back wall, before they returned to Augustine.
She held her gaze a moment too long, then gave a small laugh and straightened on the sofa.
“Well, you know what your sister is like. So run off her feet by that employer of hers it’s no wonder she gets herself muddled up sometimes. ”
Augustine nodded, but her own eyes drifted to the bookcase now, too.
Mrs Clayton laughed again. “Trust me, dearie. Mr C and I owned this place for years. The only thing upstairs was storage belonging to the estate agents next door. If there was ever a room up there, it’s long gone.”
Augustine nodded. She’d stood outside The Priestess Reversed that morning, studying the shape of the Georgian building. There was very clearly an upstairs — but no way to reach it from her shop.
Mrs Clayton was probably right. Whatever space occupied the first floor most likely belonged to the estate agents.
“Okay,” she said, returning Mrs Clayton’s smile. “No room.”
“No, of course not. If there’d been anything up there, Mr Clayton and I would have made use of it,” Mrs Clayton offered with a wink, and Augustine grimaced.
“I don’t need that visual in my mind, thank you very much.”
“What can I say?” Mrs Clayton grinned. “My Dennis is an attractive man.”
Augustine gave her a look. “Your husband is ninety-one years old.”
“And still as handsome as the day I married him,” Mrs Clayton replied, before she sighed.
“1967 we were wed. A spring wedding. I wore a white crêpe dress with a lace overlay. My mother made the whole thing — she was a seamstress, worked in the curtain factory down Limehouse way — and my goodness, the pattern cost her a bob or two. It was worth it, though, when I saw the look in my Dennis’s eyes. ”
Augustine nodded, but moved back to the pumpkins, all the same.
The move was pointed, or at least, she hoped it was.
The yummy mummy yoga session down the road would be wrapping up at eleven thirty and she wanted to catch them while they were still glowing, relaxed, and susceptible to — quite literally — the charms she stocked by the till.
She’d sell them a candle or two and maybe the odd fertility amulet — they were mostly cheap moonstone from Taiwan, but in her shop, with the right lighting, they looked the part.
Unfortunately, Augustine knew from experience that Mrs Clayton was about to spiral into some wistful nostalgia for the past. That would be catastrophic for business; happy nostalgia didn’t sell.
Witchcraft offered the promise of a better future, a path forward from unhappy past events.
Witchcraft was about invoking spirits to rework, reinvent and renew.
Mrs Clayton, with her pearl-lined clutch and apparently blissful marriage, wasn’t exactly the best salesperson for her shop, and Augustine needed her out.
“I worry about him, you know,” Mrs Clayton suddenly said, her tone lowering, and Augustine stopped, turning back towards her.
“They’re taking care of him, Mrs C,” she tried to reassure her. “He’s in the best place right now.”
“No.” Mrs Clayton sounded firm. “The best place for him is with me. It’s always been with me.”
At Mrs Clayton’s words, something inside of Augustine suddenly ached, nevertheless she tried to hide it with a half-smile. “It must be nice,” she said, trying to hide the abrupt waver in her voice. “To have that kind of love.”
“Yes,” Mrs Clayton agreed. “It is. You ought to try it for yourself again one of these days.”
Again. Augustine blinked.
“Again? What are you talking about?”
Mrs Clayton stiffened, but her finger began tapping on her clutch again. It was a nervous tell, Augustine realized.
“Well, you must have, uh, been in love at some point in your life?”
“No.” Augustine’s tone was set. “Never. Not unless Regé-Jean Page counts.”
“Who’s that?”
“He was in Bridgerton.”
“What’s that? Like Antiques Roadshow?”
“No, it’s this regency show and—” Augustine stopped mid-sentence, taking a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. I haven’t met my Dennis yet, is all I’m saying.”
And nor am I likely ever to meet him, she thought. Keep to myself, keep quiet, and no one will get hurt.
Mrs Clayton nodded, but even as Augustine turned back to her pumpkins, she could feel the old woman’s eyes lingering on her, watchful and curious. Clearly their conversation hadn’t gone the way Mrs Clayton intended.
“Don’t you need to go and see your Dennis now?” Augustine asked. “Visiting hours after lunch, remember?”
Silence.
Curiously, Augustine glanced over her shoulder.
Mrs Clayton was gone.
The bell above the shop door hadn’t rung, and Augustine hadn’t heard her leave. Perhaps she should pop to the hardware shop a few doors down to pick up some WD-40. Clearly, her bell had seized up. And as for Mrs Clayton . . .
It must be some kind of stealth pensioner trick, Augustine decided, even as she frowned again. Sneaking out like that. Or maybe it’s her orthopaedic and rubber-soled shoes. Those wide fit, arch-supporting monstrosities don’t make any noise at all.
In the new quiet, however, Augustine found her gaze drifting, unwillingly, to the same bookcase Mrs Clayton had been preoccupied with a moment ago.
There’s nothing upstairs I need to worry about. So why then did Maddy think there was? And why did Mrs C get so nervous when I brought it up?
She blew out a breath. She was being ridiculous. Mrs Clayton had been very clear. It was storage space, and nothing more. The estate agents had used it for years. End of.
And yet.
Augustine crossed the shop before she could think the better of it. The bookcase loomed taller up close, stuffed with tarot decks and paperbacks on herbal remedies. She moved to the side, placed her hands against the wood and pushed.
It didn’t budge.
She huffed and adjusted her footing before pushing again. Her upper body strength was useless. Maybe she should hit up the yoga studio instead of just selling plastic tat to its clientele.
She huffed again, and finally — finally — the bookcase began to shift forward with a low, reluctant scrape. When she’d moved it forward by a solid inch she stopped, peering behind it curiously.
It was just . . . wallpaper. The same green as the rest of her shop, faded and slightly worn to the touch. It was entirely undisturbed and entirely unbroken. It was also, entirely and somewhat disappointingly, a completely solid wall.
Just like she’d always known.
Augustine gazed at it for a long moment. “Well, congratulations,” she lectured herself. “You’ve officially lost your mind.”
Still, she stood there for another few seconds, chewing on a nail.
It was like trying to find the answer to a riddle she knew couldn’t possibly exist. She’d decorated the shop herself.
Put the wallpaper up that she was now staring at.
She knew there was nothing behind the bookcase. So why had she doubted it?
The bell above the shop door rang, the noise bright and sudden, and Augustine jumped.
The yoga crowd. Right on schedule. “Welcome to The Priestess Reversed,” she called automatically, recovering herself and smoothing down her cardigan as she turned towards the door. “Let me know if you’re looking for anything in particular.”
It wasn’t the yoga crowd though.
No. It was him.