Iris and crescent moon on upper arm

The big top came down in Wells on Tuesday, and I am writing this at the kitchen table of the lodging house with the canvas smell still in my hair, so forgive the mess on the paper. Mr Harrigan has sold the last of the elephants to a farm near Holt, and the lions went to a zoo that wants them more than we can feed them. What is left is eleven performers, a clown who drinks, and a ringmaster who keeps polishing the same brass whistle as if it might buy us another season.

Iris has not spoken since the Thursday before. You will remember her in the old days, hanging from the rigging by her knees in that blue spangled leotard she sewed herself out of her mother's curtains. The crescent act was hers alone, a hoop slung low over the sawdust with the lamps dimmed to one white circle. Last night she climbed to the hoop anyway, with nobody holding the ropes, and the house was empty except for Tom on the stairs and me in the wings with the costume box.

She did not fall. She hung there a long while, turning slowly, and then she opened one hand and let a handful of silver sequins drop from her palm. They came down in short bright lines, like rain on a train window, and the few who had stayed for the strike stood up in their seats without anyone asking them to.

I have pinned the last of those sequins into the lining of your grey coat, the one you said you did not want. Wear it when you come to the coast in spring. We will walk down to the marsh where the irises grow wild by the dyke, and I will tell you the rest properly.

Yours in haste, Edie