Compass and arrow on thigh

The brass compass you left on the counter at Pengelly's has been sitting in the window since Tuesday, and every morning I turn it to face the harbour wall so I know which way the wind is blowing before Dad comes down with his pipe. Mr Pengelly says a chart-maker's trade is dying with the new charts printed in Plymouth, but he lets me copy the compass rose onto the backs of old invoices anyway. I have drawn the eight points so many times my hand knows them without the rule: north with its fleur, the anchor you scratched into the rim, and the long arrow you made me promise to keep pointing at the Lizard.

Mother says I am being morbid, but I counted the boats in last night and the Mary Jane is still out past the Wolf rock, and the lamp on the point has been dark since Sunday. Mrs Trewin's boy saw a lorry come up from Penzance with a tarpaulin over something long, and nobody will say what it was. I pinned the chart of the Bristol Channel above my bed so I can look at where you might be, and the pencil marks you left in the margins still show the tides you wanted to beat.

Write back when you can. Tell me the needle still swings true in those latitudes, and that you have not let the ship's clock run down.

Last night the arrow on the compass shivered and swung round, and I stood in the cold yard for an hour because it was pointing straight up the lane, at our door, as if it had decided which of us was lost. Your loving sister, Wendy