Art Nouveau woman in a circle on the upper back

The poster went up on Tuesday, pasted over the old Mirror Ballroom bills beside the Pier Gate, and I stood there with the paste bucket until a man in a bowler asked whether I meant to join the drawing. You'll laugh, but it's her. The lady from the proofs, hair piled high and pinned with those heavy blossoms, turned in profile inside her round gold sun, as if she has heard her name called across the room and has decided not to answer yet.

Mr Hollis wanted her in the hall by the weekend. He says the girls who come to the Saturday waltzes stop dead at the sight of her and forget their partners. I watched it happen on Friday. A clerk from the bank tipped his hat at the poster, then walked straight into a pillar.

Last night, after the last quadrille, I found Mr Hollis alone beneath her, a glass of sherry in one hand and the lithographer's bill in the other. He said the drapery was the only thing he could not afford to have redone and asked me to fetch the ladder. When I climbed up to straighten the corner, the grey shading in her hair caught the gaslight, and for a moment she looked less like ink and more like someone about to step down from the wall.

I didn't tell him I had sketched her first, in pencil, on the back of a tram ticket. I am keeping that ticket in my apron pocket. Write soon, and tell Mum the pier is not as wicked as she imagines.

Yours in haste, Win