Antlers, flowers and script on a forearm

The oven's been running since half three and the first tray of bloomers is cooling on the rack, so you'll forgive the flour on this page. Mrs Okafor came in at five wanting her usual cob and asked after you. I told her you'd gone south to learn pastry from people who think they're clever. She laughed, which she hasn't done since her husband's funeral.

Here's the strange part. Last Thursday, before the lights came on in the square, I was scoring tins when the bakery went quiet in the particular way it does when the fridge stops humming. I'd been muttering that daft charm from the books you used to read under the counter, the one you swore would work if you meant it, using a wooden spoon for a wand. Nothing happened, of course. Then a pale shape came through the back door, low and slow, all branching antler and no animal I could properly see. It stood among the proving cloths and looked at me the way a customer looks at a loaf they've already decided not to buy. When it lowered its head, a little wreath of white flowers, the sort that grow along the canal bank, slid loose from its crown and drifted onto the flour sacks. Two arrows came down after them, one landing point first in the bread bin.

I told myself it was tiredness. I've been up since three most mornings for twenty-six years. But I pressed one of the flowers in the back of the flour ledger, and it hasn't gone brown, and the arrow is still in the bread bin, and I haven't had the nerve to pull it out.

Come home for Christmas if you can. Bring your own cloths. I'll leave the back door on the latch.

Love, Nan