Heart bottle with sparkles and clouds

The rain has been coming sideways down Hallam Street since Tuesday, so the fruit man has given up and the flower buckets are chained under the awning. I am writing this on the back of a receipt book while Mr Okafor's hens sulk in their crate beside me, because you asked for news and nothing has happened here except weather and a bottle.

The bottle belongs to a glassblower from Stoke who sets up on the corner by the fish stall every second Saturday. He sells small corked things, tinted green and rose, each one stoppered with a plug of cork gone the colour of toast. Inside he puts hearts, cut from coloured glass no bigger than a fingernail, and he charges two pounds because he says nobody should have to pay for a heart they can't hold. I bought one for Mum's birthday. Pink and yellow and a sort of teal, with a wave of rose-coloured glass rolling behind them like a tide that has forgotten where to go.

Here is the part you will not believe. When I unwrapped it in the bus shelter, the hearts had moved. Not much. The yellow one had shifted to the other side of the pink one, as if they had been talking. I shook it and nothing happened, so I set it on the bench and went to find my umbrella, and when I came back the rain had stopped and the sun was on the glass and every heart was touching the cork.

I have not given it to Mum yet. I am keeping it on my windowsill, where the light comes through green in the mornings. Come up at the weekend and see it. Bring your own rain.

Love, Bea