Yep, the first Monday after Christmas had to be right up there with rotten blooming days really. The wind was raw against her face and tugging at her new Christmas hat, which she’d bought in the sales thinking its knitted stripes might be quirky and young and cute. Now she suspected it made her look more like Haggis McBaggis, the lady with all the bags she pushed along in a shopping trolley, who sometimes hung around the bus stop but never got on a bus. Issy usually gave her a half-smile but tried not to stand downwind, hugging her large tin of cupcakes.

No Haggis today, she noted, as she glanced at the faces next to her – the same faces she stood next to in rain, snow, wind and the occasional sunny spell. Not even an old lady who pushed a trolley about wanted to get up this morning. Some of the familiar faces she nodded to; some, like the angry young man who fiddled relentlessly with his phone with one hand and his ear with the other, or the older chap who surreptitiously plucked at his flaky scalp, as if having dandruff somehow rendered him invisible, she didn’t acknowledge at all. But here they all were, every day, standing in the same places, waiting for their bendy bus and wondering how crammed full of people it would be when it finally arrived to bear them off to shops, offices, the City and the West End of London, scattering them down the arteries of Islington and Oxford Street, then scooping them up again at night, in the dark and the cold, when condensation from tired bodies would steam up the windows, and children, late from school, would draw faces, and teenagers would draw penises.

‘Hi there,’ she said to Linda, the middle-aged lady who worked in John Lewis, with whom she occasionally shared a greeting. ‘Happy New Year.’

‘Happy New Year!’ said Linda. ‘Made any resolutions?’

Issy sighed and felt her fingers drift to her slightly uncomfortable waistband. There was something about the miserable weather, the dark, short days, that made her feel like staying in and baking, rather than going out and taking some exercise and eating salad. She’d baked an awful lot for the hospital at Christmas too.

‘Oh, the usual,’ said Issy. ‘Lose a bit of weight …’

‘Oh, you don’t need to do that,’ said Linda. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your weight!’ Linda was a middle-aged shape, with one bosom, generous hips and the most comfortable shoes she could find for standing up in all day in haberdashery. ‘You look lovely. Take a picture now and look back on it in ten years if you don’t believe me. You won’t believe how good you looked.’ She couldn’t resist glancing briefly at the tin Issy was carrying. Issy sighed.

‘These are for the office,’ she said.

‘Of course they are,’ said Linda. The other people in the bus queue were coming forward now, making enquiring faces and asking Issy how her holiday had gone. She groaned.

‘OK, you gannets.’ She opened the tin. Wind-chilled faces cracked into smiles showing winter teeth; iPod buds were removed from ears as the bus stop cheerfully descended on the marmalade cakes. Issy had, as usual, made twice as many as she thought she might need so she could feed the office and the bus queue too.

‘These are amazing,’ said the man through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘You know, you could do this for a living.’

‘With you lot I feel like I do sometimes,’ said Issy, but blushing with pleasure nonetheless as everyone clustered around. ‘Happy New Year, everybody.’

The entire bus queue started to chat and perk up. Linda of course was doing nothing but worry about her daughter Leanne’s wedding. Leanne was a chiropodist and the first person in Linda’s family to go to college, and she was marrying an industrial chemist. Linda, proud as punch, was organizing the entire thing. She had no idea how difficult it was for Issy, having to listen to a mother who wanted nothing more than to put in corsetry eyelets for her twenty-six-year-old’s wedding to a wonderful man.

Linda thought Issy had a young man, but didn’t like to pry. They did take their time these days, didn’t they, these career women? She ought to get a move on, pretty girl like that who could cook, you’d think she’d get snapped up. But here she was, still catching the bus on her own. She hoped her Leanne got pregnant quickly. She was looking forward to giving her discount card a bit of a workout in the baby department too.

Issy, closing her tin and still seeing no sign of a bus, glanced behind her into Pear Tree Court. The oddly shaped shop with the grilles tightly down looked like a grumpy sleeping man in the drear grey light of a January London morning, bin bags set outside still waiting for collection.

Over the last four years various people had tried to turn it into a business of one kind or another, but they had all failed. Perhaps the area wasn’t up and coming enough, perhaps it was the proximity of the ironmonger’s, but the little children’s clothes shop with its exquisite Tartine et Chocolat French designs – at eye-watering prices – had not lasted long, nor had the gift shop, with its foreign editions of Monopoly and Penguin Classics mugs, nor the yoga shop, which had painted the entire frontage a supposedly soothing pink, put a tinkling Buddha fountain outside by the tree and sold incredibly expensive yoga mats and Gwyneth Paltrow-style soft bendy trousers. Issy, while far too intimidated ever to set foot inside, had thought it might do rather well, considering the high numbers of local trendies and yummy mummies; but it had turned out not to be, and once again there was a For rent/enquiries board in yellow and black, clashing horribly with the pink, showing in the window. Of the little tinkling Buddha there was no sign.

‘That’s a shame,’ said Linda, seeing her looking at the closed-down shop. Issy hmmed in response. Seeing the yoga shop every day – and the lithe, ponytail-swinging honey-coloured girls who worked there – had just reminded her that now she was over thirty, it wasn’t quite as easy to stay a size twelve as it used to be, especially when you had Issy’s grand passion. It wasn’t as if she could ever have been a skinny minny, not in her grandfather’s house. When she came home from school, Gramps, although he must have been tired from a full day’s work already, would beckon her into the big kitchens. The other bakers would stand out of her way and smile at the little girl, while barking at each other in their rough voices. She would feel embarrassed just to be in there, especially when Gramps announced, ‘Now, your education truly begins.’ She had nodded, a round-eyed quiet child, prone to blushing and self-consciousness; feeling out of place at a primary school whose rules seemed to change on a weekly basis, understood by everyone but her.