Flower of life with watercolour splashes on upper arm

The painter from Lewes finished the barn doors on Thursday, and you were right, the lettering was never going to be her strength. She came up the lane in August with a tin of watercolours and a sketchbook full of circles, asking Dad whether the old pear trees were planted in a pattern or had just happened. He said they just happened. She laughed and said nothing in an orchard just happens, then sat down in the grass under the Conference pears and drew ring after ring with a compass she'd had since art school.

What she drew on the door was a flower made of overlapping circles, each one passing through the centre of six others, so the whole thing looked like a pattern pressed into still water. She filled the gaps with washes: violet first, then a blue that turned teal wherever the sun caught it, and she let the colour run off the edges until it bled into the bare boards. Mum thought it was a bit much for a barn. I thought it was the only thing on the farm that wasn't painted just to be useful.

On the last evening she pinned a single star beside the flower, four points, no bigger than a thumbnail, and said it was for the moment the light leaves the orchard. Then she packed up, left a tin of tea on the back step, and walked off down the lane with the compass rattling in her coat pocket.

Write when you can. The door still smells of turpentine.

Love, Jess