Heart and crown on the side ribs

The rain has been coming sideways across the market since seven, and the awnings at the top end have given up altogether. I've sold nothing but two cups of tea and a box of tangled fairy lights, so I'm writing this instead of counting my change. You'll laugh, but I bought a tin off a man called Desmond Pyle this morning for a pound, and it was full of letters he'd never sent.

Most were to a woman named Ada Reddish, from a sailor who signed off every page with a little drawn heart. The last one had a crown sketched above it, pressed hard into the paper, and a curl inside the heart like a fern unrolling. He wrote that the crown was for her because she ruled the kitchen at the Lamb and nobody else would have dared. I think he meant it kindly. I can't tell whether she ever read them.

I took the tin down to the Lamb myself this afternoon, under my coat, and the landlady said Ada had been gone thirty years and the building was flats now. So I left the tin on the bar with a note saying whose it was, and walked back up the hill with the water running down my collar.

Tomorrow I'll set up under the bridge where it's dry. If anyone asks about the tin, I'll say it's been looked after. Write back soon, and tell me whether you think a crown means the same thing when you're the one who draws it.