Earth, nebula and sunset seascape on ribs

The fishing boats came in late again, so I sat on the wall at Porthmellow with the flask and watched the sun go down into the sea the way you always said it should, all at once and then not at all. The rocks below the slipway were black as coal against it. Mrs Pascoe's grandson was out on the shelf with a sketchbook, trying to catch the orange before it turned to pink, and I told him he'd never manage it, nobody does.

I've been thinking about your postcard. You wrote that the observatory up at Scarrow Head has a new plate of the nebula, the one with the blue cloud like smoke off a chimney, and that when you look through the glass you can nearly see the edge of the world turning. I didn't know what to say to that. I looked up after you'd gone and there was only the lamp at the harbour and a handful of stars, and I thought, well, that's the same sky, love, it's just further off than we're used to.

Pascoe's lad came over at dark to show me his sketch. He'd got the sea right, the way the light lays on it in a long stripe, but he'd drawn one big round planet hanging over the sunset, blue and green, with the continents like thumbprints on a window. I asked him why he'd put it there. He said it looked like the whole thing was already turning, and we only had to wait for someone to notice.

I've propped the sketch on the mantelpiece beside your grandfather's compass. Come home at Easter if the boats let you, and we'll sit on the wall and see whether the sun sets the same way twice.

Love, Nan