Swallow, dagger heart and purple roses flash

She sold roses at Carrow Market every Saturday, purple ones grown in a glasshouse behind the gasworks, and she kept a heart in her apron pocket that she had carved from a bar of pink soap, because her sweetheart had gone to sea and the sea would not give back his letters. Every morning a swallow came down off the iron girders of the market hall and perched on her scales to watch her weigh the petals. It had a ribbon of rust at its throat and one bright eye.

On the third wet Saturday the gutters ran so high that the stallholders stood on crates and swore at the sky. A tongue of orange cloth tore loose from the fishmonger's canopy and wrapped itself around the soap heart where she had left it drying on the sill. The swallow dropped like a stone, went straight through the cloth, and came back out with the heart clamped in its beak, the bright edge of it catching the light like a blade. Mabel shouted. The whole square looked up. The bird flew over the striped awnings and the steam from the chestnut roaster, and laid the heart down at the feet of a boy from the boats who had been standing there all morning, dripping, with a wet envelope in his hand.

Mabel never did learn whether the bird was the boy's doing or the sea's. What I know is that the soap heart was whole when she picked it up, the boy's letter was dry as a bone, and her roses sold for double that day. Now mind the puddle by the step, and take the good pie before the gulls do.