Circle of sharks on a thigh

You will tell me I am being sentimental, and you will be right, but I want this on paper before the vicar starts fussing with the lectern tomorrow. I found your grandmother's biscuit tin when I went looking for the good scissors. Inside were hotel receipts from a motel on the Gulf coast, all dated the same week in June 1979, when she and Grandad were supposed to be sorting the flat in Bristol. They spent four days on that beach instead. She kept a pencil sketch of the fishermen's boats on the back of one receipt, and under it she had written, 'Sharks go round and round the bait, and nobody gets bored.'

I laughed at that for a full minute, Marnie, because your grandmother was never one for patience. She once returned a cake to a bakery in Clifton because the sugar roses were leaning. But I have thought about it all afternoon. The sharks she saw off the pier were not circling because they were lost. They were circling because the water kept moving and they had to keep moving with it, or they would sink. Every marriage I have known that lasted had that same restless loop in it, two people going around the same stretch of sea and agreeing, now and then, to turn the other way.

So tomorrow, when your Daniel makes his speech and forgets half of it, look at him the way she looked at Grandad on the pier. Let him take the long way round the room. You will both be fine.

I have left the scissors on the hall table. Bring them back, they are still the good ones.

All my love, Auntie Pam