Cornellisen’s was the most Diagon Alley shop I’d ever seen outside of the Harry Potter movies.
We’d had a polite breakfast with the countess, at which I’d found it really hard to look at Shafeen. I hadn’t actually done anything with Henry (and, duh, it was all in my own subconscious), but the dream did feel kind of … cheaty. So I was extra affectionate as we took the Tube to Central London, almost to the point where I probably pissed Nel off a bit.
We’d got off at Tottenham Court Road, straight into the mental Christmas shopping mayhem that seems to grip everyone the week before Christmas. We then walked for a bit, and just as we got to a pretty part, the snow – as if on cue – started to fall. That gave the shop when we found it even more of a movie-set feel. The outside was painted a lovely aqua colour, with square Dickens-type shop windows, like in The Muppet Christmas Carol. When we went in the door, a little bell chimed above us, bobbing on a curl of bright brass.
Entering Cornellisen’s was like stepping into a rainbow. The walls were stacked high with every colour of paint in the spectrum, in tubes and pots and blocks and palettes. Not just paint, but pencils, crayons, pastels and every size of paintbrush from huge hairy ones down to the thinnest little whisker. There were also reams of multicoloured paper and shelves of sketch books from ring-bound to leather-bound. The smell was a weird hybrid; partly chemical, partly animal. Paint and bristle, ancient and modern, Medieval and Savage. It was all very cool, but my heart sank a little. We weren’t going to learn anything from picking up art supplies for the countess’s boredom-busting hobby.
The shop was empty except for this chilled-looking hipster behind the counter. Not for him the manic Christmas crowds. He wore a check shirt, had long hair twisted into a man-bun and this amazing waxed moustache, which looked not unlike two paintbrushes repurposed as face furniture. He looked oddly appropriate as a staff member for that place – like he’d just stepped out of Victorian times. Behind him, floor to ceiling, were rows of square black drawers set into the wall and numbered in gold like an advent calendar. It gave the place an even more Christmassy look.
‘Greetings,’ said the hipster, getting out of the chair reeaaally slowly. ‘Can I help you?’
‘We hope so,’ said Shafeen. As this had been his idea, we’d agreed he would do the talking. He handed over the little card we’d found in Volpone. De Warlencourt 21/12.
‘Ah yes,’ said the chilled-out fellow. He opened one of the drawers behind him – number seventeen, it was – pulled a volume out of it and brought it back to the counter.
As soon as he laid it down, I recognised it.
Although it was brand new it looked really old, with one of those aged greenish-black leather covers that on books they call ‘morocco’. The hipster stood the book on its end and showed us the spine. The black leather was inscribed with a decade tooled in gilt numbers.
Our decade.
Then he laid the book tenderly on its back and opened it at random. The dark volume was as creamy white inside as the wound of an axe. He riffled through the pages, and the paper was as thick as quality, smelling freshly milled and slightly chemical. That was the modern tang lying within the antique leather aroma of the shop. The pages were blank and unlined, ready to be inscribed with death.
It was a game book.
None of us looked at the others. We all just looked at the book. We all knew what it meant.
It was the hipster who broke the silence. ‘Is it OK?’
‘Yes,’ said Shafeen softly. ‘Yes, I imagine that’s exactly what’s required.’
‘Cool,’ said the hipster.
We all smiled politely as the guy started getting bits and pieces together to wrap the thing up. It suddenly occurred to me, with a lurch of panic, that we might be required to pay for this prince among books, but the hipster wrapped it obligingly in this lovely paisley paper, securing it with a golden sticker saying L. Cornellisen, without asking for any of our cash. I guessed it was all pre-paid. ‘Need a bag?’
I was about to say yes, as a book as precious as this could easily get trashed in the snow, but Shafeen said no so abruptly that I fired him a glance. I’d never picked him for a massive eco-warrior, but he turned down the plastic bag like he was Greta Thunberg. He took the package in his hands, just as it was, and made as if to head for the door. Nel and I were still standing there like fools when he turned back.
‘Actually, you know what? I think we might pop to the British Museum, since we’re in the area and all that. So can we come back and pick it up after?’
‘Sure,’ said the hipster calmly. ‘We’re open until five.’
‘Great,’ said Shafeen, placing the package tenderly back on the counter. ‘But in case we miss you – you know, if the exhibition is really amazing or something – can my … uncle pick it up another day? We’ll tell him it’s ready.’
‘No worries,’ said the hipster, sinking back in his chair again and opening his book. ‘Catch you later. Or not. Whatever.’
Nel and I shared a WTF look, but there was nothing else to do but follow Shafeen out of the shop.
‘Shafeen, what the actual?’
‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Let’s go towards the British Museum in case he’s watching.’
‘You mean he’s not nailed to that chair?’
We walked the short distance down the road to the great grey frontage of the British Museum. It looked not unlike the Ashmolean – pillared portico, grand sweeping steps – but this was way bigger: epic and impressive, the daddy of all museums. We sat on the steps, among the sea of selfie-takers, and when we were settled on the chill stone Nel said, ‘What was all that about?’
Shafeen turned up his collar against the cold. ‘It occurred to me that if we pick up the book, and then they go to get it and it’s not there, there might be some awkward questions.’
I saw. And he’d been quite clever with that little fake-out that he was going to take the book, but then turning back to leave it. ‘There still might be anyway. What if Rollo goes in and the hipster says, I met your Indian nephew the other day?’
Shafeen shrugged. ‘He might. But he didn’t strike me as a massively chatty type.’
‘And,’ added Nel, ‘unless they get it soon, we’ll be long gone.’
‘Well …’ I said.
They turned to me, both with wary expressions. I saw that they knew what I was about to say.
‘We have to go back there. You know we have to go back there.’ I didn’t have to say where there was. They both got it.
‘They’ve got the book. They’ve got the victim. They’ve got the meet all arranged. Rollo even bent the law so they can have a jolly good Boxing Day hunt. We can’t leave Ty to her fate.’
Shafeen exhaled, his breath winter white. He spoke to the air. ‘She’s right, you know.’
‘We’ll just ask them tonight if we can go,’ I said, reminding myself of the night I’d begged Louis to let us go to Longcross.
‘Well.’ Shafeen slapped his hands decisively on his knees. ‘That’s settled then.’ He hauled me to my feet, and I helped Nel up in turn. We didn’t even go in the British Museum but turned our back on the building and everything in it – a big colonial toy box we didn’t have the heart to play with today.
We all walked sombrely down the steps, walking away from history, walking towards it, a little funeral procession.
For me, every step was a sigh.
I’d known all along, really, that I wasn’t done with Longcross.