Dotwork rose on a shoulder

She walked the towpath to Hollins Hall in the grey hour before the rain. The vicar's widow grew roses the size of cabbages, and Ada cut one with a bread knife while the dog slept under the gate. The rain came down that evening in a fine drizzle, and it left a speckle of wet on every petal, so the rose looked as though someone had gone over it patiently with the tip of a pen, dot by dot, until the whole bloom had gone soft and grey at its edges.

Tolley took one look at it and shook his head. The open side was the side that faced the widow's window, he said, and a rose cut in secret always showed its face to the house it had been stolen from. Ada went back in the dark. She knocked, and when the widow came to the door in her nightdress Ada told her everything, including the coal she had shorted from the Hollins wharf every autumn for years.

The widow took the rose from her hands and turned it over. In the morning the lock gates opened without anyone touching the paddles, and the water below went flat and silver. Ada stood on the deck and counted the dots on the nearest petal, one, two, three, until she lost the thread and started again, the way you do with a sum you have finally got right.