Crescent moon and sun tattoos on two backs

The lodgers have gone back to Leeds and the house smells of vinegar and wet wool, so I finally have time to answer your letter properly. You ask whether I still think Mr Hale took the brass lamp from the upstairs landing. I don't, though I never told you what I found in the coal scuttle the morning after he left. Two little discs of tin, one scratched with a crescent, the other with a sun that had a face and far too many rays, as if a child had tried to draw the whole sky on a penny.

Your mother and I used to split everything in half that summer, you remember. Half a bun, half a crab, half the bathing hut on wet days. She took the sun because she was always up before the gulls, and I took the moon because I liked the quiet end of the day, when the front steps were ours and the sea went silver under the pier. We linked arms walking the promenade so the tide could not tell us apart.

I have kept the discs in the tin with the good buttons. Yesterday I set them on the windowsill where the light comes through the net curtains, and the moon threw a crescent of shadow across the sun, which is a daft thing to notice at my age. Come in September if the trains are kind. Bring your girl. I will show her the shadow, and you can tell her which half was always yours.

Love, Aunt Win