Ornate heart with bead chain on hand

The clasp finally gave way on Tuesday, so I have spent three evenings taking the chain apart and putting it back together, which is how I come to be writing at the kitchen table at midnight with my fingers smelling of brass polish.

You will remember the heart. Tobias Crane hammered it out of an old pewter spoon in the forge behind the Plough and curled the edges over like bracken coming up in April. He never could leave a thing plain. He put scrolls on the chapel gate too, and the vicar complained about them for years. Father wore the chain on Sundays and took it off every Monday before he walked up to the wood.

The beeches at the edge of Hollin Wood came down in February's gale, and the beads were in the hollow of the stump, rolled into the moss, thirty-three of them, black and smooth and oddly warm, as if someone had only just set them down. Father never said where he had found them, only that the wood keeps what it is owed. I counted them twice, and there were thirty-three both times, which seemed right and also not right, because I was certain there had been thirty-two when he gave it to me.

I have strung them again with the heart at the top, and I am wearing it now, so you may stop fretting about me alone up here. Come at Easter and bring the good kettle and Mabel's recipe for seed cake. The chain runs cold for a minute against the wrist and then it doesn't.

Your loving sister, Nell