Art Nouveau woman holding flowers

The lamp came back on last night after three days of fog, and I stood at the gallery rail until my fingers stopped working, watching the beam sweep the water like a comb through wet hair. Mr Pryce says I am too fond of the lens. He is probably right. The brass ring of it throws a halo across the kitchen wall every time I trim the wick, and I have started to think of it as the only portrait of anyone I will see out here.

The flowers you pressed for me came through the post in one piece, which I did not believe possible. I have put the sprig of pale stars in the tin cup by the window, where the sun catches them at six. Tell your mother the gull that nests on the landing ate the last of the bread, so the parcel of seed cake will be safe if she sends another.

Something odd happened on Tuesday. A woman rowed out from Carrick Point in a green dress with a silver comb in her hair, quite alone, and she tied her boat to our landing stage and climbed up without a word. She asked only whether the light was kept burning for ships or for the dead. I told her ships. She laughed and said that was what the dead would say too, then went back down the steps and rowed off into the murk, humming something I half knew from the chapel at home.

I have not told Mr Pryce. Tomorrow I think I will go down to the landing and look for the scrape on the iron ring where her boat was tied.