Blue and pink dragonfly tattoo on skin

You will laugh at me, but the dragonfly has been the talk of Sutton Fen all week. On Tuesday one came in through the open door of the wash-house while Mrs Pell was wringing sheets, and it hung over the copper as if it had been sent to inspect us. Its body was blue as Dad's enamel bowl, and the wings had pink in the veins, as though someone had gone over them with a fine brush and a bit of regret. Mrs Pell swore it was an omen. I told her it was only an insect, and then it landed on the whitewashed sill and I saw its shadow lie down beside it, grey and long, far too large for the thing that made it.

Half the village came to look by the afternoon. Jim Harker brought his spectacles and stood on the step squinting, and the Pell boys tried to catch it in a jam jar until I made them stop. The children were more taken with the shadow than the creature, which is ridiculous, but there it was, patient as a second visitor that had come to see what we would do. Mrs Pell went quiet after that. She told us about her own brother who went to Korea and never came home, and nobody knew what to say, so we said nothing, and the dragonfly seemed to be listening.

When I opened the window it rose and turned in the light, its wings pink against the sky and its long body a streak of blue. Its shadow slid out over the sill before it did, and I watched the pair of them cross the yard and settle on the pump-house roof. Mrs Pell says that is her brother's way of saying he is all right. I have decided not to argue.

Write soon and tell me you are eating properly. Your loving sister, Nell.