Mountain range across upper back

I am writing this at the kitchen table because Father has finally gone to bed and the cake has been argued over three times. The vicar asked again tonight whether the ridge will show in the photographs. I told him yes. The photographer is a man who once walked nine miles in the rain for a single shot of mist, and he has promised to climb behind the marquee at first light.

You remember what Grandmother used to say about those peaks: that they were a row of sleeping dogs with their backs up, and we were not to wake them. Every morning from the byre door she counted them aloud, left to right, the way other people say grace. Seven, she always said, though there were only five when you squinted. I never told her the sixth was just the shadow the fifth threw across the sky.

So I have asked the joiner for a plank for the sign-in table, and I have been painting it myself in the evenings, black and heavy, the way Grandfather painted the boat. I left the edges rough on purpose, scratchy where the rock breaks, like the ridgelines in his old sketchbook. Yesterday I brought the board to the window and saw that the seventh peak is there after all, low and faint, exactly where Grandmother said it would be. I did not add it.

Come early on Saturday. Wear your good boots and bring Father's binoculars so he can pretend he is not crying. We will walk up before anyone is awake and count them together, and if you reach seven first I will owe you a pound.

Your loving sister, Ailsa