Lily and vine tattoo down a calf

The lilies came up the way you said they would, which is to say all at once and without asking anyone's permission. Mr Abbott's bulbs from Holland sat in the potting shed for three weeks while the frost made up its mind, and then one Tuesday I came down with the kettle and found the first spike through the sacking, pink at the tip like a fingernail. I told him they were ours now. He said he'd rather they belonged to the greenhouse, since the greenhouse was the one that had to put up with them.

The vine is the bit I can't tell you about properly. The black bindweed we pulled from the north wall last autumn came back twice as keen, looping up the brickwork in those tight curls, reaching for the glass as if it had heard about the sun on the other side. I stopped cutting it. I started training it instead, string and pegs, up past the lily stems so they stood inside its loops like girls at a dance hall waiting to be asked.

Ray from the fish quay came by on Thursday with a crate of cod for the cook and stood looking at the wall for a long while. He said his mother kept lilies on the boat's rail in Lowestoft for luck, and that the men never had the heart to tell her the salt would burn them off. I asked whether any of the boats had come back. He said they all came back eventually, which is what he always says, and then he took his cod and went.

Anyway, the third bloom opened this morning, the lowest one, right by the drain. I thought you'd want to know it's the one that holds on longest.

Love, Maggie