Om mandala on the upper back

The lift in Hartley House has been broken since Tuesday, so I have counted the stairs every morning: fourteen flights, eighty-four steps if you take them two at a time, which I do not any more. Mrs Okafor on the ninth floor says the council will fix it when the weather turns, which is what they said about the boiler, and the damp, and the wasps.

Last Sunday I went down to the bins and found someone had drawn on the concrete under the stairwell light. Chalk, I think, though it had been sprayed over with something to make it last. A circle of petals, layered like a lotus opening, every petal filled in with tiny dots so close they looked like frost. In the middle there was a symbol I could not read, a curl with a half moon over it and three little strokes tilting down. Mr Adeyemi from flat 22 told me it was the sound the whole world makes, if you listen hard enough. He said it the way you would mention the weather.

I stood there with the rubbish bag until the light clicked off. Then I put my foot on the lowest petal and waited for the sensor to come back on, and it did, and I thought of you, halfway round the world, sending me photos of a sea I cannot picture. I am going to stop complaining about the lift. I am going to walk down to the bins every evening and sit on the bottom step until the light goes out, and see what it does to me.

Write back soon. Tell me the sea is still there.

Yours, Ada