Matching tea for two thigh tattoos

You will laugh at me, but the kettle has gone again and I have had to borrow the Hughes boy's primus to boil water for the lorry drivers. The pass is shut below Cwm Bach until Thursday, so the stall is full of men in wet wool who want tea and nothing else. I have sold forty cups since dawn and not one of them has asked for the tea for two you promised to keep in the tin.

I found the tin this morning under the bench, with the blue lid you painted in the spring. Inside was the chipped china cup, the one with the orange roses I was always going to fix, and your note saying the second cup was for me when I came up to see the heather. I have decided you were wrong about the heather. It is all bog and stone. But I am keeping the cup on the shelf where the sun comes through the frost.

Yesterday a girl came up on foot with a rucksack and a map folded into squares. She sat on the step and asked whether the road went over or round. I told her over, which is the only way it goes up here, and she said she had come to meet someone who had promised to wait at the top. I poured her a cup in the chipped one without asking. She turned it round three times, the way you do, and said it was the nicest thing that had happened to her all week.

I do not know if she found her person. The mist came down at four and she went back the way she came. I hope she did.

Come up when the road opens. Bring the good spoons. We will make a proper pot, and this time we will drink it before it goes cold.

Your loving sister, Nell