Matching Stay and Strong wrist script

The Conference pears came in early this year, all of them at once, the way they do when the wasps have been at the windfalls since July. Dad would have had the ladders out by six. I did it instead, with Mrs Okafor's boy holding the bottom rung and swearing at the wasps in a steady, cheerful way that reminded me of you. Forty crates, and the lorry from Maidstone took the lot without asking where the rest of us had gone.

You will want to know whether I have been sleeping. I have been sleeping like a stone. The orchard does that to a body. Your old bedroom smells of paraffin and the damson jam Mum left in the cupboard, and I have not moved the poster of the Hastings lifeboat, though it is finally curling off the wall.

Here is the part you asked me not to write. The bank man came back on Thursday with his folder. I told him what we told you at Easter: the orchard stays, and so do I. He read the pact you scribbled on the back of the seed catalogue and said it was a strong thing to leave a sister with, which I did not expect from a man in a grey suit.

The last tree on the north slope gave one late apple this morning, red as a postbox. I picked it and set it on the windowsill, where you used to leave your bus ticket and your nerve. It is still there. I am keeping it until you come home to eat it.

Love, Bea