Dotted star trail on the ribs

The tide tables came back from the Hartley boy yesterday with a thumbprint of diesel on them, and I found the thing you asked me to do still pencilled on the back. I know you thought I'd forgotten. I hadn't. I sat up at the kitchen window with Father's old star chart and marked the route from the harbour wall up over the north shoulder, one dot for every star the chart said you'd pass before the light at Gullet Point swung round. Seventeen dots. The first one I made with a proper star, a little asterisk, because you always said the bright ones were the ones that counted.

Mrs Ashdown from the chapel asked what I was doing, sitting in the dark with a pen and a pot of tea gone cold. I told her I was drawing the road home for a sailor who can't read a map to save his life. She laughed, then stopped laughing, and said the stars don't go in a straight line, they bend the way the ground does. So I bent mine. The line dips down past the Plough and curves round towards the water, and I left the gaps wide enough that you'd have to look for them.

Father would have said that was foolish. But he also used to stand at the lamp room door with his hand flat on the glass, feeling for the turn of the beam before he could see it. That's what I mean you to do with this. Feel along the dots until they lead you in.

Come back by the new moon. The kettle's on, and the window's clean.

Your loving sister, Ellen