Leaf with wolf silhouette on ribs

The fox came back to the orchard again last night, right up to the cold frame where you used to leave the windfalls. Dad says it's the same one, the one with the torn ear, though he'd never tell a fox from a dog in the dark. I sat on the back step with my tea going cold and watched it pick its way along the wall as if it owned the place, which I suppose it does now that nobody's here to shout at it.

I've been clearing the shed the way you asked. Your rake is still hanging by the door with its tines bent sideways, and under the bench I found the tin with all the pressed leaves you collected the autumn you were nine. Beech, sycamore, a horse chestnut hand-sized and gone the colour of weak tea. You'd written the name of each tree on a scrap of brown paper and tucked it under. I'm sending the one from the old silver birch, the leaf with the veins like a map of nowhere, because you always said it was the one you'd keep if the house caught fire.

Don't laugh, but I held it up against the kitchen window this morning and the light came through in a way that made the branches look like they were growing right out of the middle of it, and there was a little dark shape crossing underneath them, just where the fox would be. I know it's only the grain of the paper. I know it's only the pressing. Still, I thought you'd like to see it before the post goes.

Ring me when you get in. Mind the stove in the flat, it runs hot on the left.

Love, Mum