The November rain of 2023 hammered Longborough Market like a debt collector at dawn, the kind that soaks through canvas and turns every petal to mush. I was sixty-eight, eyes milky from cataracts and too many dawns spent slicing stems with a blade gone dull as my hope, fingers swollen like bruised plums from decades of thorn pricks and frostbite. My stall—three trestle tables under a tarp the colour of old nicotine—sat wedged between a butcher’s offal stink and a vape man’s chemical fog, the sign above it peeling: “Marge’s Blooms – sEst. 1979.” Two years I’d kept it breathing after my Alf dropped dead in the potato aisle of Tesco, heart giving out like a blown fuse. Rent tripled, footfall halved, roses from Colombia arriving half-rotted. I’d decided: last day, then shutter it. Sell the buckets, pawn the shears, maybe buy a bottle of something that burns going down and doesn’t ask questions.

I was stacking the last wilting buckets—chrysanths the colour of nicotine stains, carnations bleeding pink—when the bell above the tarp gave its tired clank. Rain hissed off the plastic roof. I didn’t look up. “Closing in ten,” I croaked. “Take what you want, half price, no haggling.”

Footsteps. Light. Not the usual clomp of market boots. A pause. Then a voice, low, warm, like honey poured over gravel. “I’ll take the white roses. All of them. And the freesias, if they’re still breathing.”

I lifted my head. There she was. Hood up, scarf high, but those eyes—blue as the delphiniums I used to grow in the yard before the council tarmacked it—cut straight through the gloom. Princess Catherine. In the flesh. No security I could clock, just her, dripping on my sawdust floor, holding a canvas tote like any punter.

I froze. My mouth opened, shut. Protocol? Bow? Curtsy on arthritic knees? Sod that. “They’re past their best,” I muttered, wiping snot on my sleeve. “Won’t last the night.”

“They don’t need to,” she said. “They’re for the children’s ward at Royal Berkshire. A little girl turns six tomorrow. Leukaemia. She asked for white.”

My throat closed. Lily. My Lily. Same ward, same poison drip, same bald head under a knitted beanie. Died three winters back. I hadn’t said her name aloud since the funeral.

Catherine—Kate, she’d told the papers once, but who was I to use it—watched me. Not pity. Recognition. Like she’d seen the same ghost in her own mirror. “How much?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Take ’em. Free. Last day anyway.” My voice cracked like the ice on the buckets.

She didn’t move. “Everyone deserves a last day that matters.” She reached into her coat—not for a wallet, but a pair of secateurs, clean, sharp, the kind I’d sold my wedding ring to replace. “May I?”

I nodded, dumb. She trimmed the roses herself, snipping bruised leaves with surgeon steadiness, wrapping stems in damp paper like she’d done it a lifetime. Her gloves were kid leather, but the thorns still pricked; a bead of blood welled. She didn’t flinch.

“Market’s changed,” I said, finding my tongue. “Used to be locals. Now it’s influencers photographing avocados. Can’t compete with Ocado.”

She tied the bouquet with twine from my own roll. “My mother started a stall once. Car boot in Bucklebury. Sold honey. Said the trick was talking to people, not at them.” She looked up. “You talk to the flowers?”

“Course. They listen better than people.”

A smile, small, real. “Then let them keep listening.” She set a crisp fifty on the table—more than I’d clear in a week—then reached into her tote. Out came a tiny pot, terracotta, a single snowdrop pushing through soil. “For your windowsill. They come back. Every year.”

I stared at the plant. My hands shook too hard to take it. She placed it gentle in my palm, closed my fingers around it like sealing a pact.

The rain eased to a whisper. Somewhere a busker murdered “Fairytale of New York.” She stepped back, hood shadowing her face again. “Thank you, Marge. For the roses. For keeping the stall alive this long.”

I found my voice. “You remembered my name.”

“I remember kindness,” she said. “It’s rarer than diamonds.”

Then she was gone, swallowed by the market’s swirl, white roses cradled like a sleeping child.

I didn’t close the stall. Next morning I was back at dawn, secateurs sharpened, snowdrop on the ledge. Word spread—quiet, the way good news travels in a place like Longborough. Locals returned. Kids brought drawings. A nurse from Royal Berkshire sent a photo: the birthday girl, bald and beaming, drowning in white petals. I framed it above the till.

Two years on, the tarp’s new, the sign repainted. I still talk to the flowers. They answer in colour. And every November, when the first frost bites, a plain envelope arrives—no crest, no note—just enough cash to cover rent and a fresh pot of snowdrops. I never see her. Don’t need to. Some kindness doesn’t need a face. Just a promise kept.

The market’s changed. But some things come back. Every year.