Orchid and jewel drawing with dangling gems

The glasshouse is quiet now that the heating man has gone, and I have been sitting among the orchids with your father's bead box open on my knee. He never threw anything away. Forty years of loose pearls, jet and the odd broken clasp, all tipped into one tin that smells of Brasso. You will laugh, but I counted the beads last night, eighty-one on the long string and sixty-four on the short, because I wanted something to do with my hands that was not crying.

The stone he set in the middle came from a dealer in Penzance who swore it was moonstone. Your father drew the whole thing for me on the back of a seed catalogue: the blooms spilling down, the buds at the side like afterthoughts, and the two faceted drops hanging at the bottom where the light would catch them. He said a flower that lasts six months ought to have something to match it that lasts longer.

I took the drawing to the jeweller in Market Jew Street this morning. He turned it upside down twice and said the diamonds would cost more than the greenhouse. So I have decided to make them from what we already have, glass and string and patience. I will post you the teardrop when it is finished, and you can tell me whether the joins hold. Love, Mum.