“You is dim, lass,” said Mabel. “You got a cunt, I got a cunt, Lizzie got a cunt, but old Ned over there, he ain’t got a cunt. Get it?”

I leaned in a little closer, holding my breath against Mabel’s stink. “Is it the vagina?” I whispered.

“Fuck, yer a genius, you are.”

I pulled back, but not before the full force of her exhaled laugh hit me in the face. Tobacco and gum disease.

I wrote: Woman’s vagina; insult. Then I crossed out Woman’s.

“Mabel, I need a sentence that makes it crystal clear what it means,” I said.

She thought, went to say something, stopped, thought some more. Then she looked at me, a childish joy spreading across the complicated landscape of her face.

“You ready, lass?” she asked. I leaned against her crate and wrote her words: There was a young harlot from Kew, who filled her cunt up with glue. She said with a grin, if they pay to get in, they’ll pay to get out of it too.

Her laughter spawned a violent fit of coughing, which required a few swift slaps on the back to ease.

When she was recovered, I wrote, Mabel O’Shaughnessy, 1902, beneath the quotation.

“And quim?” I asked. “Does it mean the same thing?”

She looked up at me, still amused. “ ’Tis the juices, lass.” She flicked her tongue in and out against her cracked lips. “Mine ain’t sweet no more, but once”—she rubbed her thumb against two fingers—“I’d eat well ’cos of me juices. The men loves to think they got you goin’.”

I thought I understood. I wrote: Vaginal discharge during intimate relations.

“Is it also an insult?” I asked.

“ ’Course,” Mabel said. “Quim’s just proof of yer shame. The likes of us use it just the same as we use cunt.” Then she looked towards the flower stall. “She and ’er old man are fuckin’ quims, and there’s no doubt about it.”

I added: Insult.

“Thanks, Mabel,” I said, putting the slips back in my pocket.

“You don’t want a sentence?”

“You’ve given me plenty. I’ll choose the best when I get home,” I said.

“So long as me name goes on it,” she said.

“It will. No one else would want to claim it.”

She gave another gummy grin and presented me with one of her whittled sticks. “A mermaid.”

Da would love it. I took two coins from my purse.

“Worth an extra penny, I reckon,” said Mabel.

I gave her two more, one for each word, then went to find Lizzie.

“And what did Mabel have to say for herself?” asked Lizzie on the walk back to Sunnyside.

“Quite a lot, actually. I ran out of slips.”

I waited for Lizzie to ask more questions, but she had learned not to. When we arrived at Sunnyside, she invited me in for tea.