No matter what script across the upper chest

The gutter over the front bay has come down again, and Mr Sallow has put a bucket under it and says he will see to it Monday, which is what he said last Monday. I am writing this at the kitchen table with the tea gone cold, because the lodgers are out on the pier and the house is quiet for once, and I find I cannot think about the letter from the solicitor without a pen in my hand.

You will have heard about the lease. Dad's name is still on the deed, and the bank wants the front rooms back by September. I have counted the bookings twice and they come to nine pounds short of what I owe. I told the bank manager I would find it, and he looked at me the way Mother used to look at a cake that had sunk.

I went down to the harbour last night to see the boats in. The Ellen Mary came round the wall with her lamp lit and Tom Fenner shouting at the boy on the bow, and it was so ordinary that I stood there a long while feeling foolish. Then I thought of the lettering Dad painted on the bathhouse sign every spring, all those looping capitals he never let anyone else touch, and I went home and found the old brush in the shed.

I am not asking you to come back. I am asking you to remember that you promised to write every week and you have not, and that I am still here. Whatever comes of the house, I mean to keep it. No matter what.

Your loving sister, Nell