It was tucked away almost three-quarters of the way down the dark, cobbled street, and people who lived in the area tended to duck their heads as they passed, not wanting to look into the dusty windows. The man who owned and worked in the shop was a social pariah. Whether this was by his own choice or if it was a position forced upon him by the residents of the street, no one quite knew. He kept odd hours and lived in the few small rooms above the shop like so many other traders on the street. Some days the door was open early in the morning, then closed for lunch to not reopen later in the day. Other times dusk would start to fall by the time he appeared from his self-imposed isolation, and the early hours of the morning would chime before he sunk back into the shadows. To push through the door that led to Dalton’s shop was to announce to Columbia Road that you were broken. Finn knew this as he reached out with his right arm, retracted it, and used his left to let himself in. The front part of the shop was gloomy; the light couldn’t get in through the windows due to layers of dirt that covered the glass.
