By eight thirty the market was filling up with serious shoppers, housewives anxious to buy the cream of the fruit and vegetables, choose the freshest fish and best cuts of meat; they heaped their baskets and scurried back to their cars, making room for another class of shopper who came to saunter round the stalls, pick over the second-hand clothes, wander among the aisles of stalls picking things up, putting them down again with no proper intention of buying. Rather they came to meet their friends, exchange news and gossip. Small children ran about getting lost, getting found, tripping over the market dogs, who milled around undecided whether to fight or romp, searching always with sniffing noses for a possible bitch on heat. A lame girl pushed a trolley selling mugs of coffee and slices of dubious pizza; there were several buskers, none properly out of earshot of the other, and a man with matted hair selling roast chestnuts. Claud began to enjoy himself.

Mavis disappeared to work in the wine bar; Brian and Susie were busy at their stall. Today Susie wore mittens. Her little pink fingers snipped and snapped up the vegetables, weighing them on the scales, wrapping them in the recycled paper bags. She dazzled her customers with her smile, flashing her neat little teeth. Claud noticed that as she weighed the carrots or potatoes she smiled into the eyes of her customer while a straying finger depressed the scale just a little, just enough, he calculated with respect, to make a considerable increase in her profit. He wondered whether large and burly Brian was party to this trick.

Customers lingered by his stall, putting on their spectacles, peering at the price tags, picking things up, putting them down, moving away, coming back to look a second time. A woman offered Claud sixteen pounds for the mug he had marked up to seventeen; they made a deal at sixteen fifty. Claud felt elated; this was his first sale. He felt he had arrived. He wrapped the mug tenderly in newspaper, took the money.

Contrapuntally while minding his stall he let his mind dwell on his novel. He saw his mother lingering at the stall which sold old household tools. She turned the handle of a frightful old mangle, chatted to the stall-holder. Was she tempted? What part could an Edwardian mangle play in her life? Claud watched his mother and exulted. Laura will love my book; she must be the first to read it. He daydreamed by his stall in the busy market of a crisp and finished manuscript.

‘What are you asking for this?’ It was one of Laura’s doubles; he held a spoon, his thumb over the price tag.

‘The price is written on it.’

‘This spoon has my family’s crest on it. I wonder how it got here?’ Almost he accused, peering with Laura’s dark eyes.

Claud took the spoon from him, looked at the tag: ‘Six pounds fifty. Sterling silver.’