Broken Homes

sell anything at all?’ asked Abigail.
    ‘I can do you a charm,’ he said.
    ‘Can I have a charm against geography teachers?’
    ‘Alas, my child,’ said the man. ‘As your large and terrifying brother can no doubt explain to you, one does not choose a charm – rather the charm chooses you. It is all part of the great and wearisome cosmic cycle of the universe.’
    ‘All right,’ said Abigail. ‘What charm can I have?’
    ‘I’ll have a rummage,’ said the man and ducked down out of sight.
    Me and Abigail exchanged looks. I was about to suggest we go, but before I could open my mouth the man popped up and dangled a small pendant for our inspection. A little yellow semi-precious stone, rough cut and mounted in a silver basket with a leather matinée length cord. Abigail eyed it dubiously.
    ‘What’s it a charm for?’ she asked.
    The man thought about this for moment.
    ‘It’s your basic all-enveloping protection charm,’ he said, his hands describing a cupped circle in the air. ‘For protection against . . .’
    ‘Envelopes?’ asked Abigail.
    ‘The uncanny,’ he said and then in a serious tone. ‘The mysterious and the sinister.’
    ‘How much then?’ asked Abigail.
    ‘Fiver.’
    ‘Done,’ she said and handed over the money. When she reached for the charm I took it first. I closed it in my fist and concentrated, but could sense nothing. The stone felt chilly and inert against my skin. It seemed harmless, so I handed it over.
    Abigail gave me questioning look as she slipped the charm over her head. There followed a brief undignified struggle as it caught in the huge puffball afro she wore at the back of her head before she could tuck it under her jumper. Then I waited while she pulled off her scrunchies, yanked her hair back into place and re-secured it with a couple of practised twists.
    ‘You’d better get back to our stall,’ I said.
    Abigail nodded and trotted away.
    ‘And you owe me a fiver,’ I called after her.
    I glanced back at the man in the booth who gave me a benign little nod.
    I strolled up the line of stalls and turned right where a booth was selling traditional cheeses, beers and rat traps. Once I was out of sight I paused, counted to sixty and then quickly retraced my steps around the corner until I could see where the Artemis Vance stall had been.
    It was still there and the man was still visible, elbows resting on his counter and looking right at me. He waved. I didn’t wave back. I decided that it probably wasn’t a mysterious magic booth after all and set off on the rest of my perimeter check.
    Beverley was waiting for me opposite the entrance to Gabriel’s Wharf, propping up the garden wall of the imitation Regency terrace that had proved, surprisingly, to be the locals’ preferred style of house. She wore a black corduroy jacket over a denim halter that left a bare strip of skin above her red, waist-high skinny jeans. Mist had beaded her locks and the shoulders of her jacket and I wondered how long she’d been standing there.
    ‘You wanted a word,’ she said as I approached.
    She smelt of cocoa butter and rainwater, of snogging on the sofa with News at Ten on mute and Tracy Chapman singing ‘Fast Car’ on your parents’ stereo. Paint-smelling DIY Sundays and sun warmed car seats, of pound parties with the furniture piled up in the bedrooms and wardrobe speakers wedged into the living room thudding in your chest cavity while somebody’s mother holds court in the kitchen dispensing rum and Coke. I wanted to snake my arm around her waist and feel the warm skin under my fingers so badly that it was like a memory of something I’d already done. My arm twitched.
    I took a deep breath. ‘I need to ask you something important.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘While you were upriver . . .’ I said.
    ‘So far away,’ she said, her hand toying with the lapel of my jacket. ‘A whole hour by car – forty minutes by train. From Paddington. They leave every fifteen minutes.’
    ‘While you were away,’ I said, ‘Ash got himself stabbed with an iron railing.’
    ‘You should have heard the screams at our end,’ she said.
    ‘Yeah, but I got him into the river and he was healed,’ I said. ‘How did that work?’
    Beverley bit her lip. The sound of my dad’s eccentric arrangement of ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ wound its way through the mist and around us.
    ‘Is this what you wanted to ask me about?’ asked Beverley.
    ‘I was thinking of Lesley’s face,’ I