1
The moon shadows in the garden created unfamiliar shapes beneath the tumbling climbers and chaotic shrubs. From the window seat of her attic bedroom, Xanthe had a clear view of the muddle of borders and the barely tamed lawn as they began to emerge from the chill of winter. The roof-scape of the sleeping town beyond the redbrick garden boundary glistened under a light frost. She thought of how quickly the weeks had passed. Christmas and New Year had come and gone in a blur of activity in the antique shop and extra bookings for the band. Then there had been January sales to organize, and work on the room of mirrors in order to accommodate the new vintage clothing venture. And now it was the first day of March, and their first spring in Marlborough, with the slumbering garden at last beginning to properly reveal itself again after the bare winter months.
In the corner, the grey stone of the little blind house stood without the softening cover of its deciduous rambling dog-roses and honeysuckle, so that it appeared all the more solid, aged, and humble. There was nothing about its size, nor its proportions, nor its worn, heavy door to give a hint of the magic that it contained. There was nothing to suggest that within those damp, bleak stones lay the secrets of the past and the means for some people—a few, special people—to journey back to times gone by. Not for the first time, Xanthe felt a sense of wonder at what had happened to her since she and her mother had opened The Little Shop of Found Things. What had begun as a new home and a new business for both of them in a quiet Wiltshire market town had turned into the greatest adventure of her life. On the first few occasions she had traveled back down the centuries she had done so without control, falling through time as if pushed from the top of a cliff of immeasurable height. Her trips to the era where she had faced danger and found love had been the floundering actions of a beginner in the art of time travel. Now though, after many more journeys, she knew that she did have some control over what she did. And now she had the book of the Spinners. To discover that she was part of a group who shared her ability to move through time and to hold their collected wisdom in her hands had given her courage. There were others like her and she could learn from them, and she was hungry for that knowledge. Slowly, she was starting to uncover their secrets. To understand who and what she truly was. However dangerous her journeys to the past had been, she was no longer afraid. That early fear of what she had been doing, and of all the possible perils, had been replaced by an excitement, a thrill, a deep, precious joy at the thought of what she now knew herself to be. Nothing, however, had prepared her for the shock of seeing her nemesis, Benedict Fairfax, standing at the top of her street, in her time. She had used her skills as a Spinner to send him away from Samuel, and in doing so, somehow, she had enabled him to travel forward to the present day. However he had achieved this feat, she had to accept some responsibility for it. She was the one who had helped him get the astrolabe. It was she who had tricked him into traveling to a time not his own to ensure Samuel’s safety. She could not, however hard she tried, shake the belief that it was her own actions that had led him to appear so close to her home, to her mother, to everything that now mattered to her. It was up to her, then, to hone her skills, to be better able to protect those she loved. In short, to become what Mistress Flyte had told her it was her destiny to become: a true Spinner of time.
What was it that Fairfax wanted? Why had he come? Still she did not know, for since that first brief, heart-stopping glimpse of him standing at the end of the alleyway, she had not seen him again. She had attempted to convince herself, at first, that she had imagined seeing him. That the vision was simply the product of a tired mind, an overactive imagination, and a confusion brought about by the tumultuous events of her life at that time. But she knew, truly knew, that she had seen him, and that he had really been there. Flesh and blood, not a ghost or shadow of a person long dead. Real and calm and cold and dangerous as he had ever been. And knowing Fairfax as she did, she could be certain that he had not chosen to appear in front of her without good reason. He had meant her to see him. He had wanted her to know that he was close. That he could choose when to confront her. And yet, so far, after so many weeks, he had not. She had been watchful, nervously checking she was not followed if she went out at night, vigilantly locking the doors of the shop, taking care not to leave her mother alone for longer than was absolutely necessary. But she had not seen him again. What was his plan, she wondered. Did he want revenge for what she had done, for how she had tricked him? She couldn’t be sure. As time went by she wished he would show himself so that she could face him, once and for all. The waiting and wondering had become intolerable, and she knew that she had begun to let her guard down. It was impossible to stay alert to the danger forever. And the not knowing when or where he would show himself again was taking its toll. The only thing she felt with absolute certainty was that he would come again. One day. And that he was capable of anything.
She pulled her woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders and got up from the window seat. Morning would come soon enough, there was work to be done and nothing to be gained by hours spent worrying over things she could not change. When Fairfax made his move she would have to be ready for him; losing sleep in the meantime was pointless.
* * *
Having at last fallen into a deep slumber, it was after eight the next morning when Xanthe descended the stairs from her attic bedroom to the kitchen on the first floor of the tall narrow apartment that sat on top of the shop. She could hear her mother singing along to the radio, raising her voice to compete with the sound of the whistling kettle.
“Ah, there you are. I was going to give you a shout. Coffee’s nearly made. Sit down and help yourself to breakfast. We don’t want to keep Gerri waiting when she gets here. Can’t have been easy finding someone to man the tea shop.” Flora pivoted on one of her crutches as she reached for the jar of ground coffee, deftly snatching a spoon from the draining board as she did so. She had become so adept at managing the restrictions her arthritis placed upon her that most of the time Xanthe forgot how she had been before it had encroached upon her health. Before she had needed sticks for support and painkillers to sleep. “It’s going to be such a help, having her input on this. I can’t think of anyone better placed to advise us on buying vintage clothing,” Flora went on, waving the spoon at her daughter. “Apart from you, love, of course.”
“I think of myself more of an enthusiast than an expert.” She gestured at her own seventies floral dress and sleeveless shetland jersey. “I can’t hold a candle to Gerri. How she always manages to look so perfectly turned out with two small children and a business to run single-handedly amazes me.”
“Not to mention her scarlet lipstick,” said Flora, pouring water into the coffeepot. “Never a smudge in sight. How come it always ends up on my teeth if I try it?”
She smiled, taking in her mother’s fine, fluffy hair which was even now escaping from the random bit of scarf she had tied around it. She glanced down at the plate of food on the table in front of her. “Another experiment, Mum?”
“There’s nothing particularly outlandish about crumpets.”
“Crumpets, no. Crumpets covered in avocado and—is that broccoli?”
“We had some left over from last night. I’ve added some grated cheese. It’ll be fine. Come on, eat up. Green food is healthy, isn’t it?” She sat down opposite her daughter and squeezed brown sauce from a plastic bottle onto her own breakfast. Xanthe poured coffee for them both, grateful for its aroma and hopeful it would make the food more palatable. Despite the twice-weekly food markets in Marlborough high street which her mother enjoyed browsing, Flora still preferred to cook whatever she found in the fridge, almost regardless of the end result.