Black and grey botanical sprig on thigh

The rain came down on the Saturday market at Hexham the way it does when it has made up its mind, straight and grey, bouncing off the awnings and running in the gutters under the stalls. Mr Pellow had his plum tree in a half-barrel by the fish van, and nobody wanted it, so I stood beside it for three hours with my collar up and my hands in my sleeves, watching the blossom go brown at the edges.

A man came past with a sketchbook under his coat. He didn't buy anything. He asked if he could draw the branch, and I said he could if he held the umbrella over it, and he did, for forty minutes, while the water ran off the brim onto his wrist. When he finally showed me the page, he had painted it in grey washes, the open flowers bleeding into the paper, the stem pulled down into one long thin line like a drip off a roof. He had got the leaves right, the way they turn their backs to the light.

I told him Father would have hated it, all that water and no outline. He said that was the point. I have been thinking about that all week, here in the cold back room with the seed trays. Father drew everything in hard black pencil so nothing could argue with it. Perhaps a thing is only sure of itself once it has been soaked through.

I am sending you a cutting wrapped in wet newspaper. Put it in a jar on the windowsill and forget it for a fortnight. If roots come, you will know the rain did its work.

Love, Nell