FIRST IMPRESSIONS

“May I help you?” I ask, as a teenager in a Primark seamless set shoves open the door of my godmother Charlotte's rare and antiquarian bookshop.

- A short story by Jessica Bull

I sincerely doubt it, given I know nothing of the trade and she looks as out of place as I feel. The only reason I'm here is because Charlotte has been called away to attend a funeral and my mother, frustrated that I've yet to find a job two years after gaining my master's degree, volunteered my services as cover.

“My nan died,” she says, hauling a Tesco bag for life stuffed with dog-eared Mills & Boons over the threshold. “I need to clear out her flat the council won't let me stay there on my own.”

“I'm so sorry for your loss,” I murmur, wondering if it's the Zone 1 flat or the grandmother she'll grieve the most.

Charlotte's shop is wedged between Belgravia and a sprawling post-war housing estate in Pimlico. If I didn't know better, I'd accuse her of maintaining it by money laundering. Instead, she profits from an inordinately long lease, negotiated before the area became fashionable, and the occasional American tourists willing to pay a fortune for a souvenir as old as their country.

“There's an Oxfam on the King's Road, I believe they take books. Or a recycling centre outside Waitrose?”

The girl's eyes wander to the shelf behind me, where Charlotte keeps her most expensive wares. “You've got a lot of Jane Austens.”

“We have. But we only take select editions and in pristine condition.” Perhaps her grandmother enjoyed a few Wordsworth Classics between the bodice rippers.

“Have you read any of them?”

“Austen? Of course,” I lie. Matthew Macfadyen is always flexing his hand on my For You page. Will that not do? “She was my nan's favourite.” I smile, tight-lipped. Austen is everyone's favourite, apart from mine. Since the day I decided to read English at university, just as Charlotte and my mother before me, both have nagged me to at least give Pride And Prejudice a try. Bonnets are their love language.