Eat me candy tattoo on the lower stomach

The parcel came on Tuesday with the post van, tied with the same string Mam uses on the rag rug, and I have to tell you the purple ones are gone already. Mrs Pryce kept a jar of them behind the counter in the shop by the lamp works, the sort she only brings out for the Whitsun walk, and she had a face on her when I asked for six. Eat me, the little cream writing says across the top of every one, as though the sweet was giving orders. Dad laughed till he coughed when I read it out at tea.

Your letter said the Ferndale men have you on nights now, and I'm glad of the wage but not the hours. Don't let the cage swallow your sense. I think of you down there in the dark with only a lamp on your cap, counting props the way you counted sweets when you were seven and I wasn't to know. I kept one back for you in its brown fluted case, the sort that holds its shape even when the sugar goes soft. There's a small pink flower pressed into one corner, and I've left it unwrapped so it won't crush.

The shift whistle went at four, the way it always does, and the village looked up from its doorsteps as the men came down the hill with their faces black. I counted them in like Dad taught me, one, two, and then the long gap where your name should be until Joe Harker shouted that you were behind him, blacker than the rest and grinning. I'm putting the sweet in this envelope so you know it's safe. Eat it on your break, not before, and think of the shop.

Your sister, Nell