Leaping fox with swirling tail design

The fox came back again last night, the same one with the ragged left ear, and this time it went straight over the rhubarb bed as if it had an appointment on the far side of the wall. Father would have had the shotgun out. I stood at the scullery window with the kettle going cold and watched it sail up over the compost heap, back legs tucked, front paws reaching for nothing, like a thing learning to fly from a standing start.

I know you think I'm making it up to keep you talking. But the tail did what Mother's ferns do in March, unfurling in curls that won't lie flat. I went out in my dressing gown with the torch and found scuffs in the frost where it had landed and sprung again, and the marks ran in loops, round and round the sundial, as though it had been writing its name in the cold.

Mr Ashdown from the allotments says a fox that dances is a fox that has been given something it cannot keep, so it gives the good parts away. I told him that was nonsense, and he laughed and said that was what his wife used to say about him.

I've left the gate on the latch. If it comes back, I'll let it be. Come up at Easter and see the sundial for yourself, and bring that patient face of yours, because I think the fox would like to be looked at properly, just once.

Love, Edie