Mandala and geometric full arm sleeve

The lift is dead again, so I carried the shopping up all nineteen floors and spent the climb counting dots. Someone has been pricking patterns into the stairwell paint with a needle, one dot at a time, and the council's grey roller has not caught up with them yet. Mrs Okafor on fourteen says it's the Sanders boy, but he can't keep still long enough to finish a biscuit, so I don't believe her.

It starts at the bottom, by the bins, with a band of little triangles like the zigzag on Nan's good tablecloth. Above that sits a medallion the size of a dustbin lid, petals inside petals, each one shaded by crowding the dots closer toward the centre so the whole thing seems to sink into the wall. By the first landing there are scrolls curling round the window frame, and on the eighth floor another medallion, then another, until the stairs look as if they are wearing a sleeve of lace that somebody has rolled up to the elbow.

Mr Dunmore came up behind me on the ninth floor with his tin of magnolia and stopped dead. I expected him to be cross. Instead he set the tin down, looked at the rose of dots for a long while, and said the lift would be fixed when it was fixed. Then he went back down without painting anything.

I have stopped counting at floor eleven. The patterns seem to go on past the last window and into the roof, which is probably where the needle has to stop. Come at Easter and bring your compass. I want you to tell me whether the circles close.

Love, Irena