Dotwork mandala on a forearm

The rain has been coming sideways through the market since Tuesday, and the awning over my stall has finally given up. I have moved the buttons into biscuit tins and the mirror glass under the trestle, and Mr Okafor from the fish end lent me his old tarpaulin, which smells of herring but keeps the water off the brass. You will want to know the brass is safe, because you were always the one who fussed over Dad's clock.

It is still the same clock, the one he brought home from Lisbon with its face gone the colour of weak tea and a ring of tiny studs around the centre where the hands fix. Mrs Hale came by on Saturday wanting it for her hall. She turned it over in her hands for a long time, tracing the little dots out from the middle as if she were counting the petals of something, and then she said she would come back when the weather broke.

She came back this morning, rain running off her hat, and asked whether the dots had been punched or pricked by hand. I said I didn't know. I said Dad never told me, and that I had always assumed the dots were simply there, the way stars are there. She stood under the tarpaulin a while, nodding, then bought nothing and left the envelope she had been holding on the trestle.

I have hung the clock on the hook above the till, where the rain can't reach it. When the grey light comes through the gap at the top of the tarpaulin, the dots throw small shadows across the blue cloth, and I sit and count them out from the centre, the way she did, until I lose my place and have to start again. The envelope is still here. I have not opened it yet.

Love, Nell