Mabel was coughing and clearing her throat of great gobs of phlegm every few words or so. I’d been visiting her with Lizzie for the best part of a year and never known her to be silent, but I thought the cough might impede her. It didn’t; it only made her harder to decipher. When she coughed again, I offered my handkerchief, hoping it would stop her spitting on the flagstones beside her stool. She looked at it, but made no move to take it.

“Nah, I’s right, lass,” she said. Then she leaned sideways and hawked what had accumulated in her mouth onto the ground. I flinched. She was pleased.

While I inspected her whittling, Mabel prattled on about the criminal, financial and sexual frailties of her neighbouring stallholders, her commentary barely interrupted to tell me the price of something.

Among her rheumy words was one I thought I’d heard before—one Lizzie had denied any knowledge of, though it had been clear from her reddening face that she was lying.

“Cunt,” Mabel said, when I asked her to repeat it.

“Come on, Esme,” Lizzie said, taking my arm with uncharacteristic urgency.

“Cunt,” Mabel said, a little louder.

“Esme, we should go. We have a lot to do.”

“What does it mean?” I asked Mabel.

“It means she’s a cunt: a fuckin’ nasty bitch.” Mabel glanced towards the flower stall.

“Mabel, lower your voice,” Lizzie whispered. “They’ll have you out of here for that language, you know that.” She was still trying to pull me away.

“But what does it actually mean?” I asked Mabel again.

She looked at me, all gums. She loved it when I asked her to explain a word. “You got yer pencil and paper, lass? Yer goin’ ta wan’ ta write this one down.”

I shook Lizzie’s hand from my arm. “You go, Lizzie. I’ll catch up.”

“Esme, if anyone overhears you talking like that…well, Mrs. Ballard will know before we’re even home.”

“It’s all right, Lizzie. Mabel and I are going to whisper,” I said, turning to look sternly at the old woman. “Aren’t we, Mabel?”

She nodded like a waif waiting for a bowl of soup. She wanted her words written down.

I took a blank slip from my pocket and wrote Cunt in the top-left corner.

“It’s yer quim,” Mabel said.

I looked at her, hoping the sense of what she’d just said would find me, as it sometimes did after a second or two, but I was stumped.

“Mabel, that doesn’t help.” I took another slip and wrote Quim in the top-left corner. “Put cunt in a sentence for me,” I said.

“I got an itchy cunt,” she said, scratching the front of her skirts.

It helped, but I didn’t write it down. “Is it the same as crotch?” I whispered.