Sun and crescent moon tattoos on ankles

Dorothea Hale ran the ovens at Fennick's on Mill Lane from the year the mill closed, and her sister Win ran the counter from the year the loaf went up a penny. They were not alike. Dorothea came in at two in the morning with her hair tied in a rag and talked to the dough like a husband who had been wronged. Win arrived at seven with her hat pinned straight and never let a customer leave without a joke. Between them they kept the shop open nineteen hours a day, and for years neither would admit the other had the harder half.

Then came the winter the boiler gave out at four in the morning. Dorothea sat on an upturned crate with her hands black to the wrist, weeping into her apron because the dough would not rise. Win found her there, having walked over in the dark with a torch in her teeth. She said nothing. She knelt by the firebox and fed it kindling until the flames caught. When the first loaves came out pale and blistered, Win took a stubby pencil from her coat and drew a small sun on the lid of the flour bin, rays and all, the way a child draws one. Dorothea laughed for the first time that week and drew a thin crescent beside it. Somebody has to keep the night shift honest, she said.

They had the marks made in permanent ink the spring after, small enough to hide under a stocking, and nobody at the counter ever asked. Win still says the moon was Dorothea's idea and the sun was all she had to give back.

At half past six Dorothea would wipe her hands, slide the last tray along the bench, and wait. The sky over the chimneys went from ink to the colour of weak tea. Then Win's bell rang at the door. Dorothea opened the hatch, handed over the warm bread, and said, go on then, it's yours now.