Elephant with watercolour splashes on upper arm

You will not believe what came up the front path of Seacrest this morning. A travelling fair had camped on the cliff field, and the keeper's elephant, Mabel, had got loose in the lane and walked straight through our garden gate as though she had paid for her room. Mrs Pargeter fainted into the aspidistra. Mr Lusk, who has lodged here since the war and says nothing he has not first sent back to the laundry, took off his hat and bowed.

I was the only one with a pencil to hand, so I sat on the steps and drew her while the keeper's boy fetched the rope. She stood with her great ears spread like wet sails and her tusks catching the light, and she regarded me the way a headmistress regards a child who has come in late. I had only the watercolours Father left me, the ones with the cracked pan of cobalt, so I wet the brush in the birdbath and laid down what I could. Orange for the sunrise over the pier, pink for the sugared rock on the stall, a blue that bled into the purple of the sea at dusk.

When the boy finally led her off towards the field, she turned her head back once, and the wash of yellow along her cheek ran in the wet, pooling into a little tide-line on the paper. I nearly tore the sheet. Then I didn't.

I have pinned it above my bed. Mrs Pargeter says it looks like a bruise. Mr Lusk says it looks like weather. I think it looks like her.

Yours in haste, Edie