Mandala flower tattoo on the thigh

The snow has sealed the Bellhaven road since Tuesday, so the carrier who was meant to bring the flour and the new ledger has not come, and Mrs Pryor has been baking with whatever she found in the cellar. I am writing at the table by the back window, where the light holds best before it goes at four. You will laugh, but I have been copying the frost. Every morning the glass grows a flower from the corner outwards, petals folding into petals, then a ring of tiny dots where the cold pricked through the paint. I tried to draw one on the back of the bill of fare and it came out like a clock that has lost its hands.

Yesterday the landlord's boy, Eddie, asked why I kept staring at the window. I told him the ice was making a rosette, and he said rosettes were for ribbons at the county show. He is nine and thinks everything is for something. Then he took my pencil and drew a ring of dots round the edge of my page, pressing so hard the lead snapped. He counted them aloud, and when he reached twelve he said that was the number of petals, the same as the frost, and the same as the clock in the taproom that nobody winds.

Last night the guests played cards by the fire and nobody mentioned the road. I sat with my back to the glass and let the lamp throw my hand across the table, and the shadow had its own small rosette of fingers. I thought of you on the quay with your sea chest, and how you said any road could be cleared if a person was stubborn enough.

I will pour the tea into the cracked pot and stop there. The frost is already softening at its edges, and there is a grey gap in the middle where the flower has come loose.

Love, Ada