“It’s Taliesin the bard. Or maybe Merlin the wizard. I reckon Miss Words-Worth ’ere will like it for ’er da.” She looked back to me, expecting praise for her wordplay. I gave a wan smile.

“It must be one or the other,” said Lizzie.

“One and the same,” said Mabel, her eyes shifting over me and narrowing slightly. “Just the name keeps changin’.”

Lizzie handed back the whittling, and Mabel took it without looking away from my face. I shifted uncomfortably and she leaned forward.

“Yer showin’,” she whispered. “In yer face. If you took off that coat, I reckon I’d see it.”

The shouts of stallholders, the clatter of carts, the competing conversations; all the sounds of the market were sucked into a single piercing note. Instinct made me look around, made me do up the undone buttons of my coat.

Mabel smiled and sat back. She was pleased with herself. I began to shake.

Until that moment, my anxiety had been all about telling Da. I hadn’t thought about what anyone else might think, or what the consequences of them knowing might be. I looked around again and felt like some small creature with nowhere to run.

“Ain’t ’eard of no wedding,” Mabel said.

“Enough, Mabel,” Lizzie whispered.

Their words cut through the ringing in my ears, and the sounds of the market came flooding back. There was a moment of relief when I realised that nobody seemed to have noticed. But it didn’t last. I had to lean on Mabel’s crate to stop from falling.

“Don’t worry, lass,” Mabel said. “Got a few weeks yet. Most people don’t notice what they don’t expect to see.”

Lizzie spoke for me, a measure of my fear apparent in her voice. “But if you can tell, Mabel…”

“Ain’t no one ’ere with my particular—what should I call it—expertise.”

“You have children?” I could barely hear my own voice ask the question.

Mabel laughed, her blackened gums ugly and mocking. “I ain’t so stupid as that,” she said. Then she lowered her voice even more. “There are ways not to ’ave ’em.”

Lizzie coughed and started picking up various objects on Mabel’s table, showing me one and then another and asking if I liked them. Her voice was louder than it needed to be.

Mabel held my gaze. Then, in a voice that carried to the flower stall and beyond, she said, “What can I interest you in, lass?”

I played along, picking up the unfinished figure of Taliesin and turning it over in my shaking hand. I barely saw it.

“One of me best, that one. But it ain’t quite done,” Mabel said, reaching for it. “Reckon I’ll ’ave it finished after lunch, if you want to come back.”

“Time to go, Esme.” Lizzie took my arm.