Compass rose with swirling wisps

The needle on your old brass compass has gone soft since you left, and Mam says it is the damp in the drawer, but I know better. I took it out on Sunday and held it over the back step, and it swung round to the pit head like a dog that has heard its master's boots. You always said the iron in the seams would pull at a needle, that down there north is only a rumour. I did not believe you then.

Mr Ashworth came round on Tuesday asking after you, with his cap in his hands the way he holds it when the news is bad. The new shaft at Hollin Bank has gone wet at the three-hundred-yard mark and they have sent the surveyors back down with their chains. He said the lamp boys are whistling songs about the water. I told him you had taught me to read a rose on a map, and he laughed and said the only roses in Hollin Bank were the ones on Mrs Pilling's wallpaper.

I have been drawing the rose on the back of the rent book, the way you showed me, with the four letters round the edge. The wind curls the paper and I cannot get the wisps right, the little smoke-ends that trail off the ring like steam off a kettle. I have decided they are where the north goes when nobody is watching it. Come home by the fourth. I will keep the needle warm on the sill until then.

Love, Eliza