Lion face tattoo on a finger

I nearly didn't come on Saturday, but the hall smelt exactly as it did in 1979, floor polish and wet coats, and I stood by the doors feeling fourteen. Nobody recognised me until I said I was the one who'd taught Art after Mr Hollis retired. Then Ray Penhale came over, grey as a pigeon, and asked whether the stone lion was still above the gym entrance. I told him it was, though the council had painted it the colour of custard in 1994 and it has never looked quite the same since.

The lion is what I really wanted to tell you about. Do you remember the pencil drawing I pinned in the corridor that spring, the one with the mane shaded so dark it looked like weather? Ray said he'd kept his, folded inside a school atlas for forty years. He was the boy who sat at the back and drew the lion's eyes while everyone else drew footballers, and I never once told him they were the best eyes in the class.

On the way out I found the old kiln room door still propped open with a brick. On the shelf above the sink sat my tin of nibs and a sketchbook with a crease down the middle. The last page was the lion again, half finished, its mane fading into the paper at the edge as if it had been walking out of the room when I stopped.

I've posted the sketchbook with this letter, though Ray would like it back. Keep it somewhere dry. I told him you'd know where the rest of the lion went.