E. M. Duffield-Fuller

In Which Clarice Goes to a Farmers' Market

Clarice feet were wet. The rain seeped insidiously over the top of her pumps (Bargainshoes.com, £12.99) as she trailed after the bundle of ribbons and thigh-high orange pleather boots which constituted her live-in landlord. The sky was flat and as grey as the concrete surrounding her without even the benefit of London’s irrepressible dandelions to break it up—the same colour as the chain-link fence plinking merrily at her in the rain, the same colour as the dull Ford Focus rusting guiltily on the double-yellow lines, the same colour as the city itself.