Mermaid with wild flower quote on ribs

The men came up from the Wheal Agnes shaft grey as ash this morning and Father did not speak at tea, so I have taken the good pencil to tell you what the sea is doing instead. It has come in brown and sulky all week, and the gulls have stopped following the carts. Mrs Penhale says it means a drowning, but she says that about everything.

Yesterday I found a drawing pinned under the chapel noticeboard. Someone had sketched a mermaid lying on the rocks with her tail curled up behind her like a fern, reaching for a small red flower growing out of a crack in the stone. Her hair was all colours, blue and rust and a green like bottle glass, and it lifted off her head as if the wind had got under it. Underneath, in careful ink, someone had written: Do you suppose she's a wild flower?

Nobody would own to it. Tom Kitto said it was his cousin's work from Hayle, and Widow Rowse swore it was off a bottle label. I took it down and folded it into my Bible, because I think it was meant for someone who would notice.

Father is due down the shaft again on Monday. I have stopped wishing for a different life and started wishing for a smaller one, where nobody needs anything from the ground but a fire to keep warm. Write and tell me Liverpool has not swallowed you whole. Your loving sister, Nell