Feather tattoo with heart on a forearm

The big top came down in Shrewsbury on Tuesday, and I am writing this on the lid of the property trunk because the caravan has no table left that isn't holding someone's lamp. Mr Pargeter sold the striped canvas to a scrapyard in Telford for less than the diesel to move it. He cried, which I had not seen him do since Mother's funeral, and then he asked me to take the peacock costumes to the charity shop before the Halls could claim them.

I did not take them all. Fifteen plumes went into the hessian sack, but one long blue feather with a rust-coloured tip had caught in the lining of my bodice and stayed there through three seasons of wire and rain. Its eye is a little heart, pressed out in orange and pink paint by Dolores before she retired to Blackpool. She used to say every act needs one foolish thing that it keeps. I thought it was nonsense then, the way you think your own mother's sayings are nonsense until you need them.

Tomorrow the last lorry leaves for Hereford, and I am not on it. The pier in Rhyl wants someone to rig lights through the winter, paid in wages rather than promises, and I have said yes. I am leaving the sack by the gate for the vicar's jumble sale. I am posting you this feather, folded flat between two sheets of card so it won't bend. Hold it up to the window when you open it, heart side first, so the colour catches the light the way it did under the tent.