Infinity symbol with love and family script

The swifts went over the pass on Tuesday, all at once, the way they do when the wind turns north. I stood in the yard with flour still on my hands and counted them until the sky closed over the notch between the two peaks. Nineteen of the purple-backed ones and a few of the green, the ones your grandfather used to say were late because they stopped to argue with the weather.

Mr Allder from the top farm came down to the wall this morning with a feather he had found on the road. Green at the tip, almost blue at the root, caught in the thorn by the cattle grid. He said it looked like it had come off something travelling a long way and didn't mind. I told him to keep it for the boy, though I don't know which boy I meant. You, probably. You were always the one who wanted to follow the road past the last sign.

The road up there does a strange thing. It climbs one side in tight bends, then doubles back so the two halves of the track seem to cross, and from the bottom you can't tell which way you came. Your grandfather drew it for me once on the back of an envelope, a loop with a line pinched through the middle. He wrote love on one side and family on the other, and I have kept it in the tea caddy ever since.

Come home before the first frost. The swifts will be back in April, and I would like to be able to tell you where they went without guessing.

Love, Nan