The Dutchman operated out of a large lorry in the Algeciras flower market. Winter and summer he stood on the trailer dispensing fresh-cut flowers, fifty stems a box. He never failed to recognise the scents worn by his clients. “That’s a new one,” he would say approvingly. Marie Amaral bought most of her flowers from the Dutchman. Thirty years ago when she opened her stall, the seasons determined her stock. Now, thanks to the Dutchman, she was able to offer flowers of all seasons, most of the year round.

The stall was a glass cabin eight feet by eight. A plastic sheet covered the door in case it rained. On market days she watered and drained whatever plants she might have carried back from the Peninsula. Then she unpacked the boxes, cutting the soft stems at an angle and hammering the tougher ones on a low formica table. In summer she brought freeze bags to put in the buckets. In winter she boiled a kettle.

Marie Amaral smelled her flowers for two or three minutes after she unlocked the stall. Thereafter she became impervious to the scents. She took her vicarious pleasure in watching others. She didn’t know about their hearts, but the corners of their mouths turned up.

She picked up her coffee. There was a milk skin on the surface, like the caul which had smothered her face at birth. “A sailor would give his mizzen mast for that,” her father had said. She kept the scrap of dry brown skin in a matchbox. She was thinking, “I should have given it to Emilio,” when there was a tap on the glass and a voice said, “What terrific bouvardia!”

It was the British Consul General.

In the early mornings she sometimes noticed him pass the door. A man’s hair told her whether he should be taken seriously. She remained undecided about Señor Wavery. She had only seen him with wet hair, but his manner had a diffidence which intrigued her. And there was the sympathy she felt instinctively for another foreigner in Abyla.

“But you have everything!” said Wavery. He looked at the shelves. He had the pinkish-grey skin you only see in Englishmen.

“I’m afraid they have to fight for existence, señor.”

“Do you buy them from Africa?”

“From Algeciras.”

Wavery, listening to her accent, said, “You must be French?”

Marie Amaral gave a frightened laugh. “I’ve been here thirty years.”

“But your accent.”

“I was born in Algeria.” She busied herself with ribbons.

He saw she wasn’t about to answer and said, “What about some mimosa?” He wanted to brighten his empty house and to chase away the plaster smells.

He waited while Marie Amaral wrapped it. He was about to leave when he noticed the begonia. “What is that?”

“The begonia?” said Marie Amaral. The horrid thing was flourishing.

“I meant the pot.”

“It’s just a teapot.”

It was not until after Wavery had left that Marie Amaral found the courage to approach the shelf. By noticing the teapot, he had made it real. This was not just a teapot. This was the only memento she possessed of David. She held the teapot to her face as if she would see her husband there and not herself, upside down in the convex metal. She looked, and upside down behind her appeared the square, the benches and the palm trees of a hotel garden in Oran where David Utor the medical student had courted her, turning over in his hands this same object.