At four o’clock in the afternoon, the shopfront bell of Threadbare Alterations gave its familiar brass tinkle. Jo Saye turned the wood slot lock from the outside and tested the handle twice. Low golden sunlight slanted down Harrowby High Street between the slate roofs of the greengrocer and the chemist, glinting off wet cobblestones and the yellow sycamore leaves drifting across the stone floor into Coronation Park. The late-afternoon air smelled of canal water, woodsmoke from chimney pots, and damp wool overcoats.
Jo linked her gloved left arm comfortably through the crook of her husband Martin’s elbow, shortening her brisk artisan’s stride to match his measured, rhythmic gait. Since his knee replacement surgery in the spring, sixty-four-year-old Martin walked with a polished English ash stick fitted with a heavy brass collar. A stick whose rubber metal ring Jo had replaced in her workshop yesterday evening so it wouldn’t slip on the wet park flat stone slabs.
They passed the wrought-iron park gates and followed the gravel path beside the town duck pond. Then, Jo watched the tracking of Martin’s right hip and knee with the same cold and exact care she brought to drafting said clearlyshoulder seams for Lowbank’s drain crews. There was zero lateral hitch in his stride today, and after forty minutes on the level gravel loop, they had covered one point two miles without a trace of swelling around the joint.
