Matching bird and branch tattoos on two backs

The kettle has boiled twice since I started this and I've still not got past the first line, so I'll just say it plainly. Mam's old saying was never really about birds on a branch, was it? It was about the two of us on the back step, shelling peas into one bowl and arguing over whose turn it was to fetch the water. Where you go, I'll go. You used to say it like a threat.

Mr Pell has finished the lettering on the chapel gate, by the way, and he spelled Ashby wrong on the first go, so I made him paint over it twice. The hawthorn is out along the lane, and the swallows have come back to the barn rafters where Dad nailed up the old tin bath. I counted four nests. I thought you'd want to know before tomorrow, when you'll be too busy to look up.

Tom asked me last night whether I'd mind being the one left behind once you're off to Leeds. I told him I'd mind it terribly, and that's the truth, but I'll manage. Someone has to keep the kitchen light on. You were always the one who went first and looked back over her shoulder to check I was still coming.

So here is what I'm sending with the parcel: Mam's finch-cage key, the one with the bent loop. Hang it on your new front door. When you're sitting in your own kitchen wondering where I've got to, look at it and remember I'm only forty minutes down the line, and I'll stay right where you left me.

Love always, Maud