Peach flower with teal centre on upper back

The rain has been coming sideways over the Tuesday market since six, and Mr Okafor's awning has finally given up, so I am writing this on the back of a seed invoice beside the peonies, which are coping with the weather better than I am. You asked whether the stall still sells the old poppies. It does, though not the way Dad grew them. The peach ones came in from a nursery in Kent on Thursday, wrapped in newspaper that was wet through before it reached me, and every petal has a bruise of shadow at its edge, as if someone breathed on it and thought better of it.

The hollow in the middle is dark as a cellar, and inside that sits a knot of stamens tipped in teal and rust, like a brooch somebody lost in a flowerbed and never went back for. Mum would have called it showing off. I sold eleven bunches before ten o'clock to a man in a grey mac who wanted them for his mother's grave. He paid in coins and counted them twice, then apologised for the second count, and I said nobody minds being careful in weather like this.

Last night I stayed late to strip the leaves. The black-inked ones have a dry, glossy look, and the sprigs of buds on the stems are still shut tight, which Dad always said meant they were keeping secrets. I pressed one bloom flat between the pages of the ledger, the same ledger where he wrote down what the roses cost in 1987, and I haven't told anyone where it is.

When you come up in April, bring the good scissors. There's a crate by the back door that needs sorting, and I'd like you to help me decide which buds are ready to open. Don't be late. The rain will keep, but the peonies won't.

Love, Ro