‘Have you never watchedDownton Abbey?’
Eric shrugs.
‘You mean she reallyiscalled Mrs Patmore?’ Jo repeats. ‘That’s amazing.’
Eric shakes his head, grinning. ‘It’s like taking candy from a baby.’ Before Jo can respond, he adds, ‘Thanks for introducing me to Clare, by the way.’
‘Clare?’
‘Met her here yesterday. Thought she was a friend of yours? Needs new contacts and has ordered glasses too. So cheers for that,’ he says, raising his coffee cup in salute.
Clare? So it’s Clare now. What can she say? She knows what she wants to ask, but she can’t think of any combination of words that wouldn’t give her away.
‘I didn’t know her name. She’s just a customer.’ Then, thinking this sounds dismissive, adds, ‘She seems really nice though.’
‘Oh, she is. She’s great. We had a good chat while I got her sorted.’ He nods towards his shop. ‘Just one of those genuinely warm and straightforward people. You don’t meet them that often. Really open and smiley.’ He grins again. ‘So I owe you one. Well, more than one.’
Jo wishes he would just shut up and drink his coffee.
To distract him from how great Clare is, she starts to unpack the parcel he took in for her. Inside are twenty pastel-coloured fountain pens, short and compact, with lids that are hexagonal rather than rounded. They are amazingly light to hold. Jo takes a blush-coloured one and unscrews the top; the lid clips perfectly onto the end.
‘Nice,’ Eric comments, ‘but a bit too small for me.’ He holds out his hands in front of him and Jo wishes he wouldn’t.
‘You’ve been getting a lot of new stock in,’ he says, glancing around. ‘You expanding your range?’
‘Yes, stationery is something I’ve always loved, so I thought why not buy some bits that I really like.’
‘I can see that,’ Eric says, with an approving nod at her window bunting.
Jo concentrates on unpacking the pens and moves the empty box aside to open the top of the cabinet. As she does so she knocks her coffee with the edge of the box. She catches the cup before it spills, but Malcolm’s notebook spins off the counter and falls open on the floor. She was reading all about John Lobb earlier this morning.
Eric leans down and picks it up for her. ‘Great handwriting,’ he comments. ‘Yours?’
‘No. It’s a friend’s. I’m helping him with some research. He’s investigating some of the people who are buried in Highgate Cemetery.’
‘I love that place!’ Eric responds, with enthusiasm. ‘Couldn’t believe it when I first visited it. Just went there because I thought my dad might like to see it. But it’s crazy. Those Victorians sure knew how to do death.’ He hands the notebook back to Jo. ‘So, who’ve you been reading about?’
‘It’s a guy called John Lobb. He was a boot-maker.’
‘Lobb? Yeah, I think I’ve heard of them. Traditional, cost an arm and a leg?’
‘Yep, but John who built the business started with nothing.’
‘When was this?’
Jo flicks through Malcolm’s notes, ‘He was born in 1829.’
Eric settles down on the stool, like he’s not going anywhere soon, ‘Go on.’
‘He came from a poor Cornish farming family, but he struggled to work on the farm after a run-in with a donkey left him with a load of broken bones, and eventually a limp. So he trained as a boot-maker. When he was a teenager he decided to go to London to make his fortune but, as there was no money to pay for the journey, he decided to walk.’
‘Jeez, that would have been tough, even if you didn’t have a leg injury.’
Jo nods. ‘Anyway, there were thousands of boot- and shoe-makers in London at the time, but John decided he only wanted to work for the best, so he walked straight into Thomas’s, on St James’s Street, demanding to see old man Thomas.’
‘What happened?’
‘Thomas threw him out on his ear.’
