Castle in an ornate frame with a pink rose

She worked in the back room above the ironmonger's, with the window propped open against the smell of linseed. The frame came first, gilt scrollwork copied from a Victorian mirror that had cracked in the vestry, and at its crown she set a purple glass bead the size of a plum stone, the one thing her late husband had ever given her that she had kept. Then the castle went in: pink towers stepping up like sugared cake, spires the colour of a kingfisher's back, and a gatehouse arch wide enough for a pony and trap.

On the last evening, with the paint still tacky, a girl called Nell from the bakery appeared at the door holding a jam jar of pale pink roses from her mother's garden, their heads already drooping in the heat. She wanted one painted at the foot of the frame, though she could not say why. Ivy tried it in pink with a cool blue wash through the petals, and Nell watched without blinking, as if the gate might open if she looked hard enough.

The fête came and went. The coconut shy knocked over nothing but air. Two summers later Ivy saw the board still hanging by the church hall doors, the gilt gone brassy and the sky bleached nearly white, and the rose was the only thing that had kept its colour. Nell had moved to the city by then, but a postcard arrived every spring asking after the castle, and Ivy always wrote back that it was still there, still waiting at the gate.