“Stolen? Really?” I ask. Jess looks at me as though she’d forgotten I was here.
“Yes, but don’t worry, my dear.” Geoffrey chuckled sadly. “Events like that are thankfully quite unusual, I must say.”
“Were they valuable? Like, rare?” Jess asks.
“Not particularly.” Geoffrey smooths his neat, white beard with one hand. “Fascinating items, as all of them are, but not valuable. They sell similar on that extraordinary eBay website.”
I swallow a smile – he makes eBay sound like it hasn’t been around for twenty odd years already.
“What was stolen, then?” Jess presses.
“More mourning jewellery. One or two old pamphlets on mesmerism – that’s hypnotism, you know. An 1830s cigarette lighter, quite a beautiful thing. Very unusual, indeed, more akin to a gas lamp than a modern lighter. German I believe. . . Ah, do excuse me!” Geoffrey ambles over to an older couple who have been hovering.
My stomach is rumbling and I’ve had enough of creepy artefacts. “C’mon,” I say to Jess. “Let’s go for something to eat. I’m famished.”
But Jess isn’t listening. Her eyes are drilling holes into Madame Josephine’s booth, instead. The red velvet rope still blocks the entrance, and, I see now, a “No Entry” sign hangs from it.
“Not yet, I just want to look in there, then we’ll go. OK?”
I fumble for a response. I don’t want to go near the booth.
“I think it’s out of bounds, Jess. Look, it’s blocked off.”
“Nah, Geoffrey will let us have a peek,” she says firmly. “He loves talking about this stuff. Look, he’s finished with those people now.”
“You go, then.” I plaster what I hope is a smile across my face and give her a little elbow nudge in his direction. “I’ll go and get changed. . .”
“Geoffrey?” Jess ignores me and her voice echoes through the cavernous space. His head twitches in our direction. “Can we have a look in there?”
He beams. “Why, of course.”
Goosebumps erupt on my arms. I look around to see if there is a visitor I can excuse myself to speak to, but the place is deathly silent. Tommy must be on his lunchbreak too.
Geoffrey ambles towards the booth and unclips the rope, removing the “No Entry” sign in the process.
“After you, ladies.” He pushes against the entrance to the booth and it swings inwards, a dark room lying beyond. It’s not just a little fortune teller’s booth, after all. It has been adapted, like one of those secret rooms in a library I’ve always dreamt about. It’s a doorway.
Jess grins at me in triumph.
“See?” she whispers, grabbing my hand. “I knew it would be awesome. Come on.”
My feet are glued to the cobbles. “I don’t know. . .”
“Please?” She gives me full-on puppy eyes and I sigh.
“Fine.”
“Yay!” She drags me beyond the rope and into the chalky darkness.
Inside, my skin prickles under the thin fabric of my costume. We are standing in a small room, barely large enough for the three of us to coexist in. Geoffrey fiddles with a panel on the wall and a low buzz breaks the silence, dusty yellow lights blinking lazily, as if waking from a deep sleep. They illuminate a bank of glass cabinets along the bare brick wall, filled with an assortment of items, and Jess makes a beeline towards them as I hang back, that horrible spiky feeling permeating my bones again.
“What is this place?” I ask, more to myself than anything. Geoffrey beams.
“This, my dear, is the infamous Madame Josephine’s parlour. Fortune teller, hypnotist, and mistress of the occult.”
“Cool,” Jess breathes. “Is this it? I mean,” she trails a hand along the cases, “I thought there would be more stuff.”
“Ah, yes.” Geoffrey runs a hand over his beard, pressing his belly into his waistcoat. “You recall the robbery I mentioned? Well, I’m afraid this space bore the brunt of it.”
