Blue rose on the back of a hand

The glasshouses on Hunslet Road have gone quiet at last, so I am writing this at the potting bench with the heaters ticking and a torch wedged in a jam jar. You will laugh, but the blue rose finally opened on Tuesday. Forty-one crosses and four winters later, the bloom came out the colour of a gas flame that has forgotten it was ever hot. Mr Okafor from the wholesalers came round at ten to see it, stood in front of it for a full minute, and said nothing, which from him is a sonnet.

I will confess what the trade will never hear from me. For the first three seasons I fed the cuttings coloured water, and the petals came out bruised and wrong. Then I stopped lying to the plant and started listening to it. The stems are so thorny that a cotton glove won't save you, and I have the scratches on my wrists to prove I was paying attention. Every bloom now has a dark outline, as if the plant is drawing its own edges so nobody mistakes it for something ordinary.

He offered four hundred pounds and a contract for the spring. I said no. The parent plant stays under the grow lamp in the back, where the frost can't reach it. I have wrapped a cutting in wet newspaper and tucked it in with this letter, so you can plant it where the afternoon sun falls across your yard. Feed it nothing but rain.

The last thing I did before locking up was read the thermometer. Eleven degrees, just cold enough for blue to hold. Write and tell me if it keeps.

Love, Ada