Blue peony bouquet across a foot

You will not believe what Mr Okafor did at the Palais on Saturday. He came across the floor with a paper cone of blue peonies from the Harrow Street stall, the kind that cost a week's wages in March, and pushed them into my hand as the band struck up a waltz. Half the girls were staring at me and the other half were staring at the flowers. I told him they would wilt before the last foxtrot. He said then we had better dance quickly.

So we did. We went round and round past the potted palms until the ribbon on my shoe came loose and he knelt on the sprung boards to tie it, flowers still crushed against his chest. Mother would have had a fit. I laughed so hard the bandleader lost his place and the trombone came in a bar early.

Afterwards we sat on the terrace steps where the sea smells of tar and chip fat. He told me the peony takes three years to bloom properly, and that florists in Lisbon once sold them by the petal. I do not know if any of it is true. He keeps a notebook of such things and says he means to write them all down for the day we open a shop of our own.

Tomorrow I am going to the tattooist on Pier Road. I want the bouquet in blue, the colour the sky goes just before the lamps are lit, and I want it where only the dancing will show it. Do not scold. Come to the hall on Saturday and tell me whether it looks like the flowers he gave me.

Your loving sister, Ada