“I—” For a moment Hannah is taken aback. What does she need? “What are these?” She gestures towards a tall spiked flower.

“Teasel. They came from my own garden, we had a bumper crop this year. And here”—the woman bends over her buckets—“these are Michaelmas daisies.”

“I’ll take some of both.”

The woman ties the flowers loosely with twine, and as she hands them over, her rough knuckles brush Hannah’s own. Hannah heads to the bottom of the market, where the crowd thins out, crosses the canal and turns right, through the estate, towards her flat, jostling her bags as she opens the unprepossessing metal street door, then climbs the external stairs to the third floor of a three-story building—an old pub, converted and sold before it was even finished. They had to elbow their way round with twenty other couples, then send their offer in sealed bids the following day. Before the decision to move to Canterbury, Cate would visit, stroking her bump, staring out at the view, wondering aloud at Hannah’s luck.

It’s not luck, Hannah wanted to say. It’s how life works. You work hard, you save throughout your twenties, and by the time you’re in your thirties, you have enough for a deposit. It’s not magic, it’s simple math.

And now here is Cate, living in the house that has been bought for her by her husband’s parents, for which, it seems, she has to pay no mortgage at all, with her healthy, beautiful son, conceived with the utmost of ease—here is Cate, unhappy again. Or at least she sounded like it on the phone last night.

Hannah slides her purchases from her bag, places the fish and samphire and wine in the fridge, cuts the stems from the flowers and arranges them in a vase, which she places in a long slant of afternoon light. The teasels are unexpected, their beauty severe, precise. Her laptop is open on the table, and as she goes to close it, she sees the report she was working on this morning, before the sun called her outside. She saves the document and shuts the lid.

She is sweating still, so goes to the sink to splash her face with water. It is the strangest feeling, as though her skull is being scraped out. The urge to cry is upon her again. She wants Nathan here, beside her, wants to feel his arm steady on her back. But he is only at the library, only a bicycle ride away, along the canal. He will be home soon. They will eat together. He will tell her about his day. She looks up, her gaze resting on the flowers, the table, the light.

This is the house that Hannah built.

Here is the table she found in a junk shop in an old railway arch and spent a weekend sanding herself.