Bat and peony flowers across upper back

The rain has not let up since Tuesday and the covered market smells of wet cardboard and peonies. Mr Okafor's stall is by the north door, the one that leaks into the buckets, and he has been selling the last of his peonies at half price because they will not last another week. I took the poppies off him for nothing. You would have laughed. I bought a bucket of sunflowers from a man who shouted about them as if they had insulted his mother.

Something has been roosting in the iron rafters above the fish hall. Ruth from the bakery says it came in with the storm. A bat, brown as an old envelope, hangs upside down with its wings folded like a closed umbrella. Nobody will move it. Every dusk it unfolds and slips out through the broken pane over the clock, and every morning it is back, hung above the sunflower crates as though it has been counting them.

Last night I stayed late to sweep. The lights were off except the one over my table, and I saw the wings spread against the glass, every vein lit grey, and I thought of Gran's seed catalogue, the drawings with hatching so fine you had to hold the page to the window. I went home and tried to draw it on the back of a receipt. It was rubbish. I am going to try again tomorrow, before the rain takes the peonies.

Come home when the boat docks. Bring me a pressed flower from wherever you are, and I will tell you whether the bat is still here.

Love, Nell