Dreamcatcher tattoo on the ribs

The ovens were lit at half four, same as always, and the dark outside the back window was still thick enough to lean on when I started the first tray of tin loaves. You'll remember the dreamcatcher Mum hung over the proving cupboard the winter we opened. I thought it was daft then, all that string and the three grey feathers, but she said a web that fine would catch the stray bits of sleep that drift about a bakery before the light comes, and keep them from settling on the flour.

Last Thursday the web caught something else. A girl came in asking for a loaf of rye she'd had once in a town she couldn't name, and while I was wrapping it she stood staring up at the hoop like it owed her money. I told her the feathers were for luck. She said she'd lost a letter in a coat pocket years back and wanted to know if the web might have it. I laughed. Then I found, tucked in the cross of the weave where nobody could reach without a chair, a folded square of paper gone soft as cloth, your handwriting on the outside, the word Sorry underlined twice.

I haven't opened it. I've left it where it is, and each morning I check the threads before the oven timer goes, as if it might have moved on its own. The bread comes out brown and loud and the whole shop smells of it by six.

Keep the cupboard door shut when you're home. Come and see the feathers, they've held up better than either of us.

Love, Nell