Behind the counter
Bodkin is one counter, one wall of drawers and one person behind it. Neelam's mother ran a machinist's shop two doors up on Mint Road from 1994, and when the factory work in Fordsburg dried up the drawers came down here instead of onto a skip. There are four hundred and twelve button lines in them, sixty-odd rolls of ribbon and braid on the wall behind the till, and thirty-one years of knowing which of them holds its colour through a hot wash. We sell in the quantity you actually need. One button to finish a coat, two metres of grosgrain, a sixty-centimetre zip cut down to forty while you wait. Bring the garment, or a scrap of the cloth, and we will match a thread to it under the daylight lamp instead of guessing off a screen. If you want a hundred of something we do not keep, say so on a Tuesday and it will be here by Thursday.
