Leni
The baker who smelled of flour and said so
Leni worked in a bakery near the river and complained that she smelled of flour no matter how often she washed, which was true, and which she mentioned roughly weekly.
She rarely stayed past midnight, because she had to be at the ovens before sunrise, and she was the one at the table most likely to be holding food and most likely to share it. She brought bread. She brought too much bread. When Zarina reappeared after nearly a fortnight away it was Leni who pushed a piece across the table and said she had told the others she would come eventually, and Tessa who pointed out that what Leni had actually said was that she was probably dead.
She was also the first person to look at Zarina and see something that did not add up. Zarina bought a pair of shoes from a market stall because she liked them and paid the first price asked, and Leni stared at her and said she had not bargained, and when Zarina said she had not known she was supposed to, said that you are not supposed to, you just should, and then could not explain the difference. She turned one shoe over, examined the sole, and said the price had been a lot too much, and that at least they were decent. They were not. The sole came away within a fortnight and Zarina kept them anyway.
The question that nearly gave her away was asked of Leni. Zarina wanted to know why a landlord would not simply repair a leaking roof, and Leni looked at her for so long that Zarina wished she could withdraw it. It had genuinely not occurred to her that the answer might be that nobody could make him. Leni herself moved rooms after a disagreement with the man, which was the sort of choice Zarina had never once been able to make: consequences attached, but it was hers.
She began seeing someone from the bakery and refused to discuss him, and then, after two drinks, discussed almost nothing else. Zarina once sat outside a closed bakery for the better part of an hour because Leni’s shift had run late, and was recognised by nobody, and was given nothing, and counted it among the best hours of that winter.