The late afternoon autumn sun slanted through the bow-front display window of Threadbare Alterations on Church Street, lighting up the dancing motes of wool dust, cotton fluff, and steam from the heavy-duty pressing iron. The shop was small, narrow, and fragrant with cedar lavender blocks, boiled starch, and old wool cloth. Two vintage Singer treadle machines sat along the exposed brick wall, their cast-iron flywheels burnished silver by forty years of driving feet.
Jo Saye sat on her high swivel stool beside the central cutting table, her gold-rimmed glasses resting on the tip of her nose, her silver measuring tape draped around her neck like a priest’s stole. Her fingers, lined with small needle-callouses and arthritic swellings at the knuckles, were pinning the hem of a heavy tweed overcoat with razor-sharp speed.
Across the table, twelve-year-old Elsie was sorting spools of heavy silk twist into a wooden partitioned drawer, humming a quiet tune under her breath.
Jo laid a heavy bolt of dark blue wool melton across the cutting table—the fabric for the stationmaster’s winter overcoat at Harrowby Central. She used her tailoring chalk. She drew the sweeping shoulder curves with swift, practiced strokes. ‘Look at the scye depth on this coat, Elsie,’ Jo said, pointing with her shears. ‘A stationmaster spends eight hours a day lifting a heavy brass signal lantern and reaching up to open carriage door latches. If you cut the armhole too tight, the fabric binds across the biceps, pulls the neck down against the collarbone…
