Lace-style chest tattoo with clasped hands

The Sally Rose is tied up under Stenson Bridge again, and I have had three days of rain to study its underside. Dad would have called that wasted time. The arches up there are scalloped like the edge of Mam's best lace, a row of fat little fans joined at their points, and every lowest curve gathers damp and lets it go in a drop. I counted eleven off the middle span before the lock-keeper came out to shout at me for sitting on his towpath.

You'll remember the cloth she made the winter before she went, the one that lived in the drawer with the good spoons. She never finished the border. Mrs Hollis at the chandlery says she will finish it for me if I bring the thread, but I haven't the heart to pick up Mam's needle. Instead I've been drawing the arches in the back of the ledger, the ones with the hanging beads, and the lock-keeper's boy says they look like a crown somebody forgot to wear.

Yesterday the water came up a hand's width overnight and I had to shift the boat to the far side of the cut before it took the mooring pin. I stood on the bank in my boots with the rope going stiff in my fists and watched the drops swing under the bridge, grey and patient, not one of them falling until it had to.

I drew the last arch this morning and made its drop heavier than the rest, the way she used to, so it looks like it is waiting for something. Come home before the next flood, and bring the thread.

Nell