Atom and arrows on a forearm

Mam says I am not to write about the pit on your good paper, so I will tell you about the schoolroom instead. Mr Haddow has finally pinned up the new chart, the one with a little nucleus in the middle like a jam drop and rings of wire spinning round it. He says the dots on the rings are electrons, though nobody has ever seen one, and when Eileen Thompson asked how we know they are there, he gave her the look he keeps for people who ask too many questions before dinner. Then he drew three arrows bursting out past the edge of the paper, as if the whole thing wanted to leave the room.

After tea I sat on the step counting the lamps going out along the rows, and thought of you under the hills at the new works, where the men talk about orbits the way Dad talks about shifts. Always going round, always coming back to the same hook on the same wall. Your last letter said the corridors down there have no windows, so the only true north is the one painted on the compass board by the lamp room. I hope they let you keep a pencil.

Dad came up the lane yesterday with his face grey from the seam and stood in the yard a long time looking at the sky. He said the spoil heap looked like a planet from the bottom of the road, all lit at the edges. I laughed, and he did not, and then he said something about you that I will not write down because you would only worry. He went straight to bed without his supper.

So I took the chalk drawing off the board when Mr Haddow was out of the room and I have pinned it above my bed. The arrows point up and to the left, towards the window and the lane and the road that comes down from the works. I have marked the little dots with a pencil so you will know which one is you. Come home by the lane, Tom. Mind the step.