Cat silhouette in a moon with flowers on a back

The cat came aboard at Braunston the week after you left, and I have decided she is mine now, whatever Dad says about cats and cargo. She is black all over, and every evening she sits on the coal hatch with her tail wrapped round her feet, watching the water go past as if she is being paid to keep an eye on it. Last night the moon was only a sliver, a paring over the lock gates, and she sat right beneath it so the two of them made one shape against the sky.

I wrote that down because I thought you would like it. You always liked things that looked arranged when they were only accidents. The towpath brambles have gone wild along the cut this summer, and there is a flower, five petals, pale as milk, growing out of the old lock beam where nobody planted anything. I pressed one in the back of the log book. It has gone brown at the edges, but the shape holds.

Mr Pryce at the wharf says cats on barges bring luck, which I told him was nonsense, and then he offered me a fair price for the cheap pine stool, so I am counting that as his superstition paying out. The Swan is at the Oxford arm until Thursday. Come and see the cat before she decides she prefers the Pryces.

Write soon, and tell me whether the flat has a window big enough for the moon.

Love, Jo