Metallic flash sheet of arrows, feathers and hamsa

The Bramleys came down on Tuesday and the wasps have gone soft and stupid on the windfalls under the old codlin. Mrs Pryce's boys have been sorting good fruit from bruised all week, and I have been sitting at the end of the trestle with your parcel open in front of me, the one that came back from Hull with the wrong stamp on it. Inside was that sheet of foil transfers you bought off the fair man in August. You said they were for the girls at the packing shed. I say they are for whoever is leaving, and that is you.

There are gold feathers, a silver one, a black one, and a hand with an eye in the palm that Mother would have called a wicked thing to leave lying about. I didn't throw it in the copper. I kept it. The crossed arrows are on the bench where the cider press leans, and I pressed one gold arrow onto the post by the gate, pointing down the lane toward the station road, because that is the way you walked the last time you went.

I left the infinity sign alone, the one with dream written through it. Somebody on this farm ought to be doing that. The letters HEART and MIND came out of the sheet backwards on my thumb, and I thought that was rather like you. Ruth's husband says the fair man has gone to Lincoln and nobody has seen him since the first week of September, so I suppose the rest of the sheet is ours now.

I have put the last silver arrow in this envelope. Stick it somewhere you will see it on the boat. If it turns up pointing the wrong way, blame the wind, not me. Come home before the frost takes the last pears off the wall.

Edie