Maple leaves and swirls down a calf

The gulls have been at the bins again, and Mrs Pardoe says the ferry is late for the third week running, so you can imagine the mood on the quay. I found your envelope under the mat on Tuesday, gone soft at one corner where the rain got in. Three maple leaves pressed flat between the pages of an old shipping gazette, and not one of them crushed. You always were careful with things you didn't want to lose.

Dad would have laughed at the notion of you posting leaves across the Atlantic like a love letter. He kept the rowing boat on the slip for forty years and never once learned a bowline that held. I've hauled it up the shingle above the spring tide line and put the oars in the shed where the damp can't get at them. The lane behind the chapel has gone copper and gold, and the sycamore outside number nine dropped half its crown in one night of wind.

Here is what I want to tell you. Last Sunday I walked up to the headland with the dog and sat on the bench with your initials still scratched into the slats. A single leaf came turning down out of a clear sky and landed on my knee as if someone had sent it. I kept it. It's in my purse now, marking a page in a book I haven't finished.

Write back properly this time. Tell me what the autumns look like out there, and whether the leaves go all at once or one by one. The fire's lit and the kettle's on.

Your loving sister, Ada