Matching Minnie Mouse best friends tattoos

The band at the Palais has moved on from the waltzes to something with a brass section that makes the floorboards hum, and I'm sat by the radiator with my coat on because Mr Pryce has decided heating is a luxury for other people. I wanted you here for it. You always said I danced like a folding chair, and tonight I proved you right with Dennis from the bakery, who trod on me three times and apologised each time as if I'd been the one with the wrong feet.

Your letter came Tuesday. I read it on the stairs with the landing bulb out. You say the new town has a cinema with a sticky carpet and a girl at the counter who calls everyone love, and that you've been drawing the mouse again on the back of your timetable, the bow lopsided because you're doing it from memory. I still have mine in the drawer under the good tablecloth, the ink gone a bit blue at the edges. Some nights I think if I held it up to the cracked mirror in the hall, the words would stand the right way round for once.

Something is different about the sign above the door. Mr Pryce had the lettering redone, and the man who painted it put the s on the wrong side of the word, so customers squint at it and laugh. I didn't laugh. I thought of how we sat side by side on the kerb outside the chemist with our wrists turned toward each other, so one set of words read backwards to the other and that made them ours. Write back and tell me yours still holds its ink. Mine has gone soft, but the bow is still red enough to make Dennis ask whose it is.

Come home at Christmas. Bring the mouse. I'll save you a dance, and I'll lead, because I've been practising in the kitchen with the wireless on.

Love, Pat