Anglerfish and pin-up on the side ribs

The boat came in Tuesday with a thing in the net that Dad wouldn't let anyone touch until he'd fetched the chemist's jar. Ugly as sin, black-mouthed, with a little lantern dangling off its forehead on a stalk like a bent wire. Mr Pengelly swore it had been lighting itself the whole way up from the deep, and I believed him, because the lure was still faintly glowing when they lifted it onto the slipway, a green-white ember that went out slowly, like a match someone had forgotten to blow.

Mum says I'm not to write about fish in letters, that you'll think I've gone soft in the head since the Dance Hall closed. But I want you to know what I did. I took the pin-up calendar from the net loft, the one with Miss Tamsin Vane in her red heels that Uncle Walt keeps nailed above the winch, and I pinned it to the wall beside the jar. Then I stood there with the lamp, and the fish's teeth looked like a row of little white hairpins, and the girl's stockings looked like the net itself, and I thought, well, that's the whole of Porthkerris in one picture.

Dad came in and laughed till he had to sit on the bait tub. He said the thing was a lure-bearer and a gentleman's pair of legs and it was the most honest picture he'd seen all year. Then he took the calendar down, folded it neatly, and put it in his coat, and I haven't the faintest idea why, except I think it was for you.

Anyway, the fish is going to the museum in Penzance on Friday. Come home if you can. Bring your dancing shoes, the red ones, and bring Walt a new calendar. He's been very sorry since you left.

Love, Eve