Pink daisy with yin yang on a thigh

The oven in the back was already ticking when I unlocked the shop at ten to five, and the flour sacks had gone soft at the corners the way they do when the damp comes up off the river. I have started the bread without you for the first time in nineteen years. Mr Oduya from the chemist was waiting on the step with his newspaper folded under his arm. He asked where you had got to, and I told him Scarborough, which is true, though I did not say you have not written since Easter.

I found your apron in the drawer under the till, the string knotted the way you tie it, twice round and a bow that never holds. I did not wear it. I hung it on the hook by the back door, where the yard light catches the daisy you stitched on the pocket the summer you were fourteen. You never got the petals even, and I have always liked that about it. The two round tins on the top shelf still have the black and white circles you painted on their lids, the ones Dad said looked like a pair of fish chasing each other's tails.

This morning I tried your saffron buns and got the proving wrong twice. Then I stopped fighting the dough and sat on the upturned crate with flour to my wrists, watching the window go from black to the grey of an old dishcloth. A milk float rattled past. The first gulls came down on the bins.

When the bell over the door rang at half six, it was a young woman with two paper cups and a rucksack, asking if we still did the round loaves with the cross cut in the top. We do. I pulled one from the rack, still warm, and wrapped it for her, and I did not mention that this bakery has always been yours to open. I think you would have liked her. She laughed at the sign, and then she asked what the circles meant, and I told her it was a long story, and that I was still working on the ending.