Lace garter tattoo on the thigh

You will laugh at me, but Mr Hallam has finally taken me off the machine room and given me the pattern book for the garter laces. He wants a scalloped band a finger's width deeper than the old ones, with a rosebud at every second point and scrolls between them curling like wood shavings. I thought of your kitchen window in Calais, where the light came in grey over the sill, and I drew the first sheet the way you taught me, pricking the card before I let myself look at it twice.

The girls on the bobbin frames call it the widow's pattern, because it was first ordered by a dressmaker whose husband had gone down with the Lady Mary. She wanted something that could be worn under black silk and still show when she crossed her legs on the omnibus. Nobody says so to her face. Mr Hallam says it is a fashion, and a fashion is a thing a man can sell by the yard.

Last Thursday a sample came back to us for mending. Four inches had torn where a ribbon tie was pulled too hard, and the thread had worn to the colour of weak tea. I sat with it under the lamp for an hour, matching each flower head by eye, and when I finally held it to the window the join could not be found. I put the scrap in my apron pocket and I have it now, folded small.

I am sending you the sample I kept, the one I was not supposed to keep. Hold it up to the light and you will see the pattern runs both ways, as if it was made to be looked at from either side. Write and tell me if that is only my vanity.

Your loving sister, Clara