The bread and pastries arrive on a palette, in roughly fifty boxes, stacked upon each other. They become a single entity, looming over you like the ghost of Christmas future. Five loaves of bread per cardboard box. Sixteen cinnamon buns. Twenty croissants. After the food is placed onto the display table, I run my fingers along the spine to another corner, rip through the glue, fold the flap towards the middle and move to the next. Corner, rip, fold, flip. A cardboard chiropractor, finding the spots and releasing the tension, over, and over. After each piece is folded into itself, it’s placed into an untampered box. Within that space flattened cardboard is layered until you need a new box, and at the end, what was once a tower of produce is now a makeshift chair.

Rita, the person who worked Walthamstow before me, taught me how to fold and stack. On my trial shifts we’d work together. In the dead time she tells me about her cousin, the only relative she has in the U.K, her back pain, her veganism, the state of her Visa and how it runs out at the end of the year. The only way she can stay in the country is if her employers apply for a visa on her behalf, or if she gets married. Employers said no. I said, we’ll just have to get married then! On my next shift she brings me a homemade ball wrapped in tin foil, made with sultanas and nuts, it had no flour, sugar, or butter and the texture was the oral equivalent to nails running down a chalkboard.

On our next shift Rita is focused on the logistics of our marriage, which seem to have already been confirmed. In between sales she tells me about the references we’d need, no, that’s not gluten free, visits to the embassy, two pounds fifty please sir, thank you. She’s talking so much my responses can only pepper on top of what she’s saying. They’re not replies, they’re adlibs on a Young Jeezy record. A Jeezy without confidence. Okay. And how would that? Okay. Is that? Okay.

Just as I’m working up the courage to tell her I’m an idiot who makes idiotic jokes, her hand slams against the table. Her breathing suddenly changes rhythm. A distinct pain has announced itself and taken over her body. I go to comfort her, but all I do is hover and ask if she needs a break. While I’m trying to show empathy, she sees what I can’t hide, fear. She bursts into tears.

When you work every single shift, six days a week, the winter months take a strain. Staying static and upright in this cold means the smallest movement can twinge and twist your muscles into a Sharpshooter. Rita texted me the next day apologising, saying it wasn’t me that caused tears, but her back. Before she left I bought her a card that all of the traders signed, she texted me saying thank you, within my screen her apology was still visible. While replying my phone felt further and further away from me. It was something short, followed by a green heart and bread loaf emoji.

When I first started in Walthamstow, customers would always ask me where the friendly Indian lady went. “Indonesian” oh. “Rita” ah. “Visa ran out” oh! The reply every time- oh- ah- oh! Followed swiftly by their order. Life goes on. There’s still fifteen minutes before the market opens, January, one year of running this Sunday stall on my own. All I feel is the cold. I go to sit on the box and before I make contact, a rush of pain travels up my back.