Gold rose temporary tattoo on a wrist

The ovens were already ticking when I got in this morning, just gone four, and the street outside was still that dead blue colour it goes before the buses. Dev had propped the back door with a crate of black tins, the ones you always said looked like wet slate, and I stood in the flour-dusted kitchen for a minute before I switched on the lights. I wanted you to know the shop is open. I wanted you to know I did the rose.

You'll remember the rose. You taught me to pipe it on the back of a teaspoon when I was eight, turning the nozzle with my wrist and never my fingers, the petals going round and round until they looked unrolled from something tight. Mrs Okafor's silver wedding cake last month had forty of them, and the man from the council asked if we'd had them flown in from Italy. I said no, my mum taught me, and he looked at me as if I'd told him the sea was a pond.

This morning I did the last one with the gold dust you kept in the tin with the faded robin on it. A single rose on the lid of the cardamom buns, two leaves beside it and a tiny cluster of berries underneath, the way the wallpaper in the dining room used to run all the way round the walls. I brushed it on dry until it caught the light from the window. Dev came in, looked at it, and said nothing, which from Dev is a standing ovation.

Anyway. The bread's out and the shutters are up. Come and see it before the queue starts, and bring the tin.

Love, Ruth