Fine line geometric arrow on upper back

The net loft smells of tar and rain, and Mr Garrow has finally let me weave the lattice on the big seine without him standing over my shoulder. You will laugh, because I have spent three years being told my knots are too loose. Yesterday I tied a diamond into every fourth row, the way Granddad did on the old herring net, and it held when the boys dragged it full of rocks to test it.

Something else. On Thursday, while the tide was out, I found an arrow scratched on the underside of the slipway steps, pointed head, feathers at the tail, and a diamond lattice worked down its shaft as if someone had gone over it with a fine nib. Nobody in Porthcarne will own to it. Mrs Pell says it is the mark of the wreckers' boats, and Jack Tregear swears a girl from the lifeboat house cut it before she ran off to London with a fiddle player. I think it was a sailor waiting for someone to come back the same way.

I copied it onto the back of my wage slip in pencil. Then I walked it along the harbour wall and held it up against the Hollow Light, and the arrow lined up exactly on the gap between the two headlands, the one the ferry takes in fog. I have not told Mr Garrow. I have only told you, which is the same thing in this town.

So I am taking the Saturday boat to Falmouth with the paper folded in my glove. Don't send anyone after me. Keep the loft key under the third brick, and tell Mother the loose knots were mine.

Love, Ada