The Enchanted Charity Shop
I, Emily, often think back to my childhood, and every time, that charity shop springs to mind—like a little treasure trove my friends and I would dash into after school. I was eleven, in Year Six, and the world seemed full of mysteries. With Sophie and Grace by my side, we turned ordinary days into adventures, and that shop was our goldmine, a place where every item held a story. Even now, years later, I close my eyes and see its shelves, smell the old books, and feel that giddy childhood excitement I can never quite recapture.
That year, the three of us were inseparable. Sophie, with her perpetually messy plaits, dreamed of becoming an archaeologist, while Grace, the most serious of us, carried a notebook in her backpack where she scribbled “important thoughts.” Me? I was somewhere in between—a daydreamer, imagining myself as a book heroine one minute and an explorer the next. After school, we’d rush off to the charity shop on the corner of our street instead of heading home. It looked a bit grubby, with a faded sign and a squeaky door, but to us, it was Aladdin’s cave, packed with curiosities and wonders.
The shop was small, but inside, it felt endless. The shelves groaned under the weight of oddities: tarnished candlesticks, dog-eared books, lace-collared dresses, clocks that had long stopped ticking. The shopkeeper, Mrs. Wilkins, always sat behind the counter with her knitting, tutting fondly, “Now, girls, behave yourselves—don’t go breaking anything!” But we weren’t there to misbehave. We were explorers on a quest. Sophie once unearthed a copper brooch shaped like a beetle and declared it an Egyptian princess’s amulet. Grace pored over yellowed fashion magazines, dreaming up designs she’d sew one day. And I? I was all about the books—especially one battered old pirate novel. I’d flip through it, half expecting a treasure map to fall out.
One chilly November afternoon, we ducked into the shop again. Rain drizzled outside, our wellies squelching, but inside, it was warm and smelled of dust and lavender. I made a beeline for my beloved book section, while Sophie dragged Grace over to the jewellery box. “Em, come here!” Sophie whisper-shouted. “Look at this ring!” On her palm sat a delicate band with a green stone—dull but somehow still magical. “This has got to be from a castle,” she declared. Grace squinted and added, “Or a baroness’s jewellery box.” We giggled, trying it on in turns, and suddenly, I felt like I’d stepped into a fairy tale.
Mrs. Wilkins, noticing our excitement, wandered over and grinned. “Taken a fancy to it, have you? That’ll be fifty pence, girls. Best snatch it up before someone else does.” Fifty pence! All we had in our pockets was lunch money, but we weren’t giving up. “Let’s pool our change!” I suggested. We scraped together every coin: I had twenty pence, Sophie had ten and a few coppers, Grace had fifteen. Still short, but defeat wasn’t an option. “Mrs. Wilkins,” Sophie pleaded, eyes wide, “can we owe you the rest? We’ll bring it tomorrow!” She shook her head, but her smile gave her away. “Oh, go on then—but I’d better see that ten pence by Friday!”
We left the shop like conquering heroes. The ring stayed safe in Grace’s pocket, and we took turns touching it, as if it really held magic. That night, I lay awake imagining it belonged to some world-travelling adventuress. The next day, we paid our debt—I even skipped my biscuit at break to scrape together my share. And though the ring eventually vanished (Sophie swore it was in her pencil case), the memory never faded.
That shop wasn’t just a place for second-hand junk. It taught us to dream, to find wonder in the ordinary. Sophie, Grace, and I grew up, moved away—Sophie became a geologist, Grace a graphic designer, and me, a literature teacher. But whenever we chat, someone always says, “Remember that charity shop?” And we laugh, as if we’re eleven again, standing before shelves bursting with stories.
Now I live in a big city, and proper charity shops like that are rare. Sometimes I pop into antique boutiques, but they’re too polished, missing that magic. I miss the creaky door, Mrs. Wilkins’s chuckle, our wild little imaginations. Just last week, I found an old book in a box—that same pirate novel. I opened it, breathed in the scent of the pages, and for a second, I was back in Year Six. Maybe that shop was our treasure—not for the things it held, but for who we were inside it. And I’ll always be grateful for a childhood like that—full of friends, dreams, and a little enchanted shop that never really left my heart.
