Flower of Life mandala on a thigh

I finally found the drawing you asked after, the one Mr Adeyemi pinned above the bench in the back room of the Corn Exchange. It was never a clock at all. It was a rosette of overlapping rings, one circle seeded inside the next until the whole thing held together like a cartwheel, and he called it the mother pattern. He swore every hall floor in the old Palais had been laid out from it, which is why the dancers always found their feet so easily there. I laughed at him then. I'm not laughing now, because I stood on that floor last Saturday and watched the lines sit still under the lamps while everyone else whirled.

The ballroom is shut now, the boards are up, and the council wants the hall for flats. Mr Adeyemi's shop is closed too, but his daughter let me take the old drawing before the skip came. I have pencilled the outline onto tracing paper and I am sending it to you with this letter, because you always did have the steadier hand. Trace the seeded circles from the middle outwards. Do not hurry the petals at the rim, he said those were the scrolls where the band's bass used to live.

If you do it properly, you will see the centre opens into six points, then twelve, and where the lines cross you can find the little shape he called the door. Walk it once with your finger and you will understand why he never charged for the lessons.

Write back when it's done. Bring the tracing to Thursday's meeting. We can decide together whether the flats need a floor that remembers anything.

Your loving friend, Marjorie