Cross, pink ribbon and heart on upper back

I nearly didn't come to the reunion. Standing in the sports hall with a plastic cup of warm squash, I kept scanning for the girl who ran the raffle table in Year Nine, and then I spotted you by the trophy case, still holding the biscuit tin with the wobbly ribbon taped to its lid. You said you had never once given it back. I have been carrying that tin around in my head for thirty years.

Do you remember the sponsored walk that summer? Mr Okafor paced the far field with a stopwatch, and you pinned a pink ribbon to your blazer, cut from the offcut of Mrs Pryce's sewing project. I thought it looked terribly grown up. Every lap was a penny from the parents, and the vicar promised a pound for each one he counted from the gate, which nobody ever understood. We finished at four in the afternoon with grass in our socks and a total that had the head teacher laughing into his tie.

I still have the little tin cross you pressed into my palm at the bus stop, the one from your nan's prayer book. I keep it on a chain under my jumper when the weather turns. Last week I finally drove past the old field. They've built houses across it, with neat gates and bins lined up by the kerb. But I stood at the fence a long while, and I could have sworn I heard Mr Okafor calling out the laps.

Write back and tell me whether the tin still rattles.

Love, Jo