Compass rose and globe dotwork design

The lift in Harrow Court has been broken since Tuesday, so I have climbed the fourteen floors twice today with the shopping, and I am writing this at the kitchen table with my knees complaining. Mrs Okafor on eleven says the council will fix it when the weather turns, which is what they said about the boiler.

Your old atlas is still on the shelf above the telly. I took it down last night because the boy on the third floor wanted to know where Lagos was, and I could not find it without your thumbprints on the page. You always drew a small compass in the margins, eight points like a star with the world sitting in the middle. I thought it was a child's habit. You told me the points were there so nobody got lost, even when they were standing perfectly still.

I have been thinking about that since the post came. The envelope had no return address, only a postcard of a harbour I didn't recognise, and on the back someone had drawn that same compass, every point stippled with tiny dots, the crescent of a moon curling up one side like a hook. There was nothing written. I held it up to the lamp for an hour, as if the dots might rearrange themselves into words.

So I have put the atlas on the windowsill, propped on its brass stand, open at the page with the Atlantic on it. The streetlamp comes through the glass and lights the edge of the world, and the moon over the car park looks thin enough to cut. Come home when the lift works, or when you know which way you are facing. Either will do.

Your sister, Ada