Ornamental feather drawing in black ink

The ballroom at the Pavilion has a new ceiling and nobody will tell me who painted it. Mr Haskett, who ran the cloakroom for thirty years, swears it was the decorator who drank himself out of Scarborough, but Mr Haskett also swears the band played in tune in 1921. What I know is that the design was drawn in black ink on paper first and traced up in plaster, and every panel holds a feather with its quill running corner to corner, the vanes packed with paisley swirls and tiny dotted flowers, as if someone had counted every petal twice.

I went up the ladder on Tuesday with the sweeping brush. Under the gallery rail I found a real one, grey-brown, snagged on a nail. I brought it down and held it against the drawing on the wall, and the pattern on the vane matched the pattern overhead stroke for stroke. Whoever drew it had looked at a feather very hard, the way you used to look at the sea before you signed on.

I haven't told the manager. I've decided instead to keep the feather in my apron pocket and dance with it, which sounds mad, I know. Last night the foxtrot ran long, so I took it out and set it on the boards by the rail. When the lights dropped, it looked for a moment as if it might lift off the floor and go up to the ceiling where it belongs.

Write back soon. Your loving sister, Edie