Mabel was so absorbed that she didn’t notice we were standing by her stall until Lizzie put an orange on the crate in front of her. Her craggy face barely registered the gift, but she put down the knife and whisked the orange into the folds of her rags. Then she picked up her knife and resumed her whittling.
‘You’ll like this, when it’s done,’ she said, looking at me.
‘What is it?’ asked Lizzie.
Mabel turned to Lizzie for a moment and passed her the figure.
‘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 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.
‘I’ll keep it tucked away so no one else buys it,’ Mabel said as we turned to leave.
I nodded. Mabel nodded back. Then Lizzie and I left the market without finishing the shopping.
‘Will you come in for tea?’ Lizzie asked when we got to Sunnyside. The senior assistants all worked a half-day on Saturday, and I’d often kept Lizzie company in the kitchen while I waited for Da.
‘Not today, Lizzie. I thought I’d go home and hang a few decorations as a surprise for Da.’
When I got home, I climbed the stairs to Da’s room and again stood in front of Lily’s mirror. It wasn’t my belly that Mabel had noticed; it was my face. I peered into the glass, trying to see what she had seen, but the face that stared back was as it had always been.
How was that possible? It must have changed year to year, and yet I could not see it. I looked away from the mirror then glanced back quickly, trying to catch a glimpse of myself as a stranger might. I saw a woman’s face, older than I expected, her eyes wide and brown and frightened. But I saw nothing that told me she was pregnant.
I went back downstairs and wrote Da a note. I was dress shopping, it said. I’d be home around three with pastries for afternoon tea.
I cycled back to the Covered Market. When I arrived, I was out of breath – more than usual. A familiar boy came to where I stood and offered to lean my bicycle against the nearest wall. He’d keep an eye on it, he said. His mother nodded from her stall, and I nodded back. Did she see something in my face? Is that why she told her boy to help? I looked in at the market – the clamour only added to the chaos in my head.
As I walked among the shops and stalls, I felt I was drawing every eye. I needed to act normally. I went from one stall to another, recalling Tilda and the others as they practised backstage; the rehearsal was never as convincing as the performance. I wondered if I was convincing anyone.
By the time I arrived at Mabel’s stall, my basket was full. I handed her an apple.
‘You need to eat more fruit, Mabel,’ I said. ‘Keep the catarrh out of your chest.’
She exaggerated her rotten smile so I could see the deficit of teeth. ‘I ain’t eaten an apple since I was a lass ’bout your age,’ she said.
I put the apple back in my basket and pulled out a ripe pear. She took it
