They moved through the market the way you move through anything with a four-year-old and a toddler — slowly, erratically, stopping every few metres for a new discovery. Eira found the candle stall and declared she could smell Christmas. Tima found a booth selling wooden toys and attempted to dismantle a stacking tower with the quiet efficiency of someone who builds things by first understanding how they come apart. The woman behind the stall watched with the amused patience of someone who had seen many toddlers and understood that the toys were not hers to protect from small hands.

The Welsh cakes came from a booth near the iron railings, cooked on a flat griddle by a woman in a striped apron who handed them over in paper bags that were immediately translucent with butter. Steph bit into one — warm, sugary, dense, the raisins soft and the outside just brown enough — and felt the particular satisfaction of Welsh cakes eaten outdoors in December, which is a satisfaction that cannot be replicated in any other month or any other location.

She broke a piece off for Tima. Tima took it, examined it, smelled it, tasted a corner, looked at Steph with an expression of cautious approval, and then ate the rest in one go.

"More," she said. "Muh."

"More?"

"Muh!"

Steph gave her another piece. Tima ate it with her eyes closed, which was something she did sometimes — closed her eyes to eat, as if removing one sense made the others louder. Steph had noticed this before. The way Tima experienced things wasn't faster than other children — it was deeper. She went into sensation the way some people go into water: completely, with nothing held back.

The puppet show was set up under a canopy near the Samson statue — a small wooden-frame theatre, the kind with felt curtains in red and gold and a scalloped arch above the stage. The puppeteer was a woman with short grey hair and fingerless gloves, and she worked two hand puppets at once with the casual dexterity of someone who had been doing this at local markets for twenty years and could probably do it in her sleep.

The show was simple — a dragon and a sheep, arguing about who owned a Christmas pudding. The dragon wanted to eat it. The sheep wanted to wear it as a hat. The audience was mostly under five and mostly delighted.

Eira sat cross-legged at the front, her face tilted up, her mouth open, completely gone into the story. She shouted advice to the sheep. She booed the dragon. She cheered when the pudding was ultimately shared between them (though she whispered to the child next to her that the sheep should have kept the whole thing).