Welcome to Ferry Lane Market - Nicola May Page 0,15

want a yellow rose, with a bit of gyp and green for those. You’ve got no plans, have you? The venue is doing the rest up there and they don’t want anything in the church. It’s in the Oak Room at Crowsbridge Hall. OK?’

Kara breathed in deeply, then exhaled for a count of seven. This small but effective calming tactic had got her through many years of tolerating Lydia Twist.

‘No plans, no,’ she replied stoically.

However much she felt like rebelling, especially at the mere mention of Crowsbridge Hall, she couldn’t rock the boat. She needed this job, even more now Jago’s benefits were no longer coming in. Despite his lazy, thieving ways, she had always managed to bag a percentage of the mortgage from him before he frittered the rest, and some. But she wouldn’t be doing that any more. She had half-hoped he would return last night with his tail between his legs to maybe offer some sort of apology, but he hadn’t. Not even a text message to say when he was coming home to collect his stuff – including Sid – let alone everything else she had cited in the letter. It was no doubt for the best, but it hurt nonetheless.

She had awoken this morning after a short and fretful sleep, feeling both sad and lonely and with James Bond standing with his tail in the air and his bum within two inches of her face. She had had a little cry, wondering out loud whether a single life was really what she wanted. But later, when Sid Vicious caught her unawares and bit her palm hard enough to draw blood for the heinous crime of putting food in his tank, it not only caused her to sob uncontrollably, but also brought her to the beginnings of acceptance of the sham that her eight-year relationship had been.

Kara struggled out to the marketplace carrying a vase full of particularly tall gladioli.

‘Morning, darling. How’s it going today?’ Pat Dillon enquired from the stall opposite. In her mid-fifties, and as wide as she was tall, Patricia Dillon was salt to her husband Charlie’s pepper. Since the much-loved characters had moved down from the East End of London twelve years ago with their twin boys, they had been immediately accepted and soon became renowned amongst the market dwellers for being not only all-seeing and all-knowing, but all-swearing, too.

Despite earning a particularly good living from their shop, Pat’s appearance wasn’t a priority. Her bleached, shoulder-length hair quite often had dark roots showing. She rarely wore make-up to accentuate the small features in her round, rosy-cheeked face. Her huge tortoiseshell spectacles were quite often covered in smudges, and her uniform of tatty jeans and baggy T-shirts was standard. However, for what she lacked in self-care, she gained in that rare quality in a person where beauty and joy radiate from their soul. She was also one of those women that if she were to lose weight, she wouldn’t be who she was any more.

Clonking the vase down, spilling water on her black trainers as she did so, Kara knew that the minute Pat got a glimpse of her face, she would know that Kara wasn’t all right at all. Remaining silent was her safest tactic.

Pat continued, ‘Don’t let that frigid cow get you down. We all know she just needs a damn good seeing to. Go on, tell your Auntie Pat: what’s up, darlin’?’

Charlie squeezed Kara’s arm affectionately, telling his wife, ‘Leave the kid alone, Pat. You’re such a nosy old cow, you are.’ He carried on arranging some shiny aubergines in a row.

‘Mind your own business, Colonel bloody Rhubarb, and get back to what you’re good at.’ Pat slapped her husband’s bum. ‘Silly old sod.’

But Charlie was right. Kara wasn’t ready to open up to anyone else today, so was glad for the crashing diversion of Darren Dillon.

‘Forgot to charge my bloody phone, didn’t I?’ The lad came rushing down the metal backstairs of the flat above Dillon’s, which he shared with Billy, his non-identical twin.

‘How many times do I have to tell you that you should get an old-fashioned alarm clock like me and your dad,’ his mother nagged. ‘And why didn’t your brother wake you when he left? You’ve got an army of deliveries to do today.’

‘Too many questions when I’m not yet with it, Ma. And Billy did wake me, I just fell back to sleep.’

Darren ‘Daz’ Dillon had a shaved head like his father. He wore a