Leopard print heart on upper back

Your cardboard heart came this morning, bent double and smelling of your gran's pipe. I have pinned it to the cutting table beside the spotted velvet from the Leeds bundle, which is the only thing in this castle still behaving. Mr Pryce wants forty hearts by Saturday for the summer fête in the bailey. He wants them in leopard print because the showman from Hull promised the children a real cat and turned up with a tin of biscuits and a sulk.

I cut them on the bias so the spots run uphill, the way you showed me. The old keep wall is where we hang them to dry, and the wind off the moor makes them flap like a flock of startled starlings. Dolores from the tearoom says the trick is one stitch at the point, so the sharp end never folds under. I did four dozen last night by candle, because the electric has been dead since the storm took half the lead off the roof and the lamps went with it.

The trouble was the last heart. Its spots bunched together on one side, dark and heavy, and I nearly cut it up for rags. Then Mr Pryce's grandson came up the tower steps with his jumper inside out and asked for a sticker. I pinned the wrong heart to his chest without thinking. He looked down at it for a long time and said it was a leopard that had been kissed. I have decided he is right, and I have decided not to tell Mr Pryce.

Come in August if you can. The hearts will be gone by then, and the cat, I suspect, will still not have arrived.

Love, Nell