Blue betta fish tattoo on the top of a foot

The pipes froze again on Tuesday, so I have been carrying kettles across the yard like a girl in one of Grandad's stories. The lambing shed is at least warm enough to sleep in, and that is where I found the fish. Mr Pargeter had left a jam jar of cloudy water on the feed bin with a blue betta in it, no bigger than my thumb. He said he won it at the Ludlow fair and could not be bothered to keep it alive through February. I told him I would take it off his hands before he tipped it into the dung heap.

So it lives on the windowsill above the range now, in water I warm twice a day with the back of my wrist. It is a foolish thing to fuss over, I know. But in the evenings, when the lamp is lit and the glass goes black, the fish opens up like a sheet of blue silk being shaken out, and the fins hang behind it in long ribbons that catch the light from the stove. I have named him Sexton, because he seems to keep watch over the house and does not care for visitors.

Last Thursday the range went out in the night and I woke to the kind of cold that gets into your teeth. I went down in my socks with a torch. The jar had skinned over at the rim, and for a moment I thought I had lost him. Then I saw him near the bottom, barely moving, his fins drawn in like a closed umbrella. I broke the ice with a teaspoon, and he came up to the surface and spread out slowly, all of it at once, as though he had been waiting for someone to notice.

Come up at Easter if the roads allow. You can see him for yourself, and bring the good tea, not the cheap stuff Mum buys. The lambs should be on the grass by then.

Love, Jo