Handwritten quote design in two lines

The ferry went over on the Saltmarsh crossing last Thursday, which Mr Pell says is the first time in forty years she has tipped on the calm side. I was the one holding the tiller, so you can imagine what the parish has been saying. Nobody drowned. Mrs Ashdown lost her hat and a crate of Bramley apples went to the eels, and I stood on the shingle in my wet boots thinking of the sign you painted over our door before you left: choose to chance the rapids. You thought it was a joke about the weir. I never told you it was the only thing I had ever believed.

Strictly speaking, the rapids are the weir below Hollin Mill, where the river drops like a stair. You always took the stair. I have only ever taken the long way round, by the bridge, and I have been dry for eleven years because of it. Tomorrow I am going to take the boat out past the bar instead, on the big ebb, when the sand shows its teeth and the current wants to run. Pell says I am mad. Maybe. But the marsh only gives up its channels once a day, and you have to be out on it when it does.

I found your old chart in the chandlery drawer, the one with the pencil soundings all over the bar. Someone has written in the margin in your hand: dare to dance the tides. I laughed out loud in the empty shop, which frightened the cat.

Come home, or don't. I will leave the lamp lit on the landing at low water either way.

Love, Ruth