Heart and swirl vine design

The 6.14 came in this morning with frost still on the roof of the third carriage, and I stood at the end of Platform Two and counted the doors the way you taught me, one, two, three, as if the number might turn into you. It never does. Mr Pargeter says I should stop meeting every train, that the Great Western is not a carrier pigeon, but he has never had a sister who could make a hedge look like a cathedral.

The vine on the wall outside the signal box has gone quite wild since you left. It climbs past the lamp bracket now and has put out curls like the ones you drew on my cuffs, and last week two small white flowers opened at the very top, right where the gutter meets the slate. I have not picked them. I thought you would want to see them first, and I know you will say they are only bindweed, which is precisely why I am keeping them.

Last Thursday a porter's boy asked me what the heart on the timetable board was for. Someone chalked it in the corner years ago and nobody has had the heart to rub it out. I told him it was a message for whoever was coming back down the line. He laughed and said trains don't carry messages. I said that depends entirely on who is driving them.

Do write. Even a postcard with a single swirl on it would do. I will know it is yours.

Yours always, Walter