Peptide chemical structure tattoo on ribs

You will think I have lost my wits, but the lodger in the back room has drawn a whole chain of letters on the tablecloth again, and this time I let him. Dr Ferrier arrived in April with two trunks and a microscope wrapped in a blanket, and every breakfast since he has sketched on the linen with the back of a spoon dipped in marmalade. Little zigzags, an N here, an O there, a tiny S where two lines meet. Mrs Quayle says he will have us all condemned by the council. Yesterday he showed me how the thing hangs together, a string of small joined parts folding back on itself until two sulphur atoms reach across and hold hands. He called it a bridge. He said if you cut the bridge the whole shape goes slack and falls open like a wet paper bag.

I asked him what it was for. He said the body makes it without asking anybody's leave, and that was all the answer I got, because the kippers arrived and he went quiet over them.

On Thursday I found him on the sea wall at six, the wind pressing his hair flat, reciting the letters under his breath like a catechism. I sat with him. He told me the bridge breaks and remakes itself a hundred times a day, and nothing about it is ever finished. I thought that a sad thing to say to a woman with a flannel in one hand and a bucket in the other, but he meant it kindly.

Come at Whitsun and bring the girls. I have pinned his tablecloth in the parlour frame so nobody sits on it.

Love, Maud