Flower and swirls on the hip

The lamps on Clement Row were already lit when I set up the folding table, and the gulls were fighting over somebody's chips by the bins. You asked in your last letter whether the stencils still work now that everyone wants their designs done in a hurry. They do, if you know which ones to trust. I've been copying the old pattern book your grandmother kept, the one with the water stain shaped like Cyprus, and tonight I drew a five-petalled bloom with the vine curling off it in three loops, the way she did.

A young man from the harbour office came by at ten and asked if I could hide his mother's initial somewhere in it. I told him flowers don't hide things, they show them. He laughed and let me work anyway. The ink dried slowly in the sea air, the tiny dots going grey before they went black, and all the while I kept thinking of the market on Fenner Street where you and I used to sit under the strings of bulbs.

When he stood up, he asked whether the swirls would fade. I said everything fades except the shape you choose to keep. He looked at the outline in the little mirror the way you'd read a menu in a language you almost know.

I've kept the spare stencil, the one with the two dots I couldn't decide on, and pinned it above the table. Come home in spring and we'll decide them together.

Love, Mina