Draped chain with fan motifs and hanging leaf

The pickers finished the Bramley rows on Tuesday, and Dad spent the evening stringing the orchard with the paper fans you and I made when we were nine. Four of them, folded from the back pages of Gran's seed catalogue, one for each of the old cider trees along the top wall. They hang with the glass beads from the button tin, and when the wind comes up off the valley they knock together like someone counting under their breath.

I strung the chains myself, sagging from fan to fan in long loops, and each loop drops a little lower than the last until the longest one reaches the gatepost. Dad said it looked like a bridge that had given up. I didn't tell him that was the point. On the end of that chain I tied the copper leaf you left on the kitchen windowsill in June, the one with the crooked vein you said looked like a map of nowhere.

Mrs Okafor from the lane came up on Thursday with a basket of plums and asked whether the fans were for a wedding. I said they were for whoever came back to pick. She laughed, then didn't, and gave me the plums anyway.

The apples are coming down faster now, thudding into the long grass. Every evening I walk the rows and look for the leaf catching the last light at the bottom of the chain. It has not moved yet, but the wind is getting stronger, and I think by the weekend it will be turning the way you used to when you were sure someone was watching.

Love, Rosie