Pencil sketch of a plumeria flower

The bloom you pressed into my hand on the quayside has gone the colour of weak tea, but I have kept it flat between the pages of the waltz book with the cracked spine. Mrs Pryce found it at Tuesday rehearsal and asked whether a girl who danced like a lamppost could afford flowers. I told her it was not mine to spend. It was a gift from a sailor who still owes me the second half of a foxtrot.

Mr Ashworth has put the new band on the bandstand at the Winter Gardens, though the floor is still sticky from Saturday's lemonade. Forty couples came on Friday. Three of them were men in borrowed collars who stood at the edge and asked whether I knew the one about the tram conductor and the mermaid. I said I did not. I did not want to, because you are the only one who ever told it right, with the pauses in the places where the trombone would have come in.

The petal that curls back on itself, the one you called the sailor's thumb, has finally let go of its shape. I laid it on the piano lid and it stayed curled, so I have left it there. When the band starts the Saturday waltz, I look at it before I count the bars.

Come home by the autumn, or send word if the ship keeps you. I have saved you the last dance on my card, and I have kept my good shoes dry. Bring proper dancing boots this time, not the ones with the nails.

Yours in three-four time, Nell