Fairytale castle in scrollwork frame

You copy the castle from a tin lid your sister brought back from the chapel rummage stall, a picture of towers painted the blue of a sky that never reached this valley. The spires defeat you. You press too hard and the paper tears, so you start again with ink borrowed from the vicar's wife's fountain pen, which bleeds a little into the gateway. You decide the blot is a moat, and that the moat needs a drawbridge, and the drawbridge needs a lad at the top of it with a lamp.

Your mam comes in with the kettle still in her hand and stops at the table. She doesn't say the thing everyone is waiting to hear. She lifts the drawing under the lamp and runs one finger round the scrollwork, the way she does the lace on her good collar. 'You've given it ears,' she says. You tell her the round bit at the top is the crown, and she laughs for the first time since Tuesday, a short sound that surprises them both.

In the morning the whistle goes at six, same as always, and your father takes his bait tin and his boots without a word. You find the drawing on the mantel, pinned under the clock with a bent nail. The gateway is still smudged. Your mam has written nothing on it. She has only left it where anyone coming in from the cold would see it first.