Heart brooch and roses tattoo

The lorries are parked nose to tail behind the Co-op in Thetford now, and the big top is folded in the back of the last one like a sheet nobody wants to sleep under. Mr Varley has sold the ponies. He says the roses are for the Friday crowd, but nobody has come on a Friday since March. I've been sewing in the caravan with the heater ticking, doing what I can with the costumes before they go to the charity shop in King's Lynn.

Your brooch was in the trunk with the spangled leotards. I found it wrapped in a bit of lilac satin, exactly where you left it the night you went. The heart is still gold at the edges, though the pink paste in the middle has cracked along the crescent, right across the moon. I'd have mended it, but I didn't like to touch it without you.

Varley came round this morning with a man from a jeweller's on Magdalen Street. He held it up to the window and said it was costume glass and wouldn't fetch a tenner. I didn't argue. I put it in my coat pocket instead.

I'm posting it to you, love, with a stamp I can barely afford. Keep the moon the right way up. You always said it was the only part that mattered when you were hanging twenty feet over the sawdust, and that a girl ought to know which way the light is coming from.

Yours, Bea