Pink lotus flowers on lower back

The pond at the back of the Harvest Fair is nearly dry now, and Mr Ostler says the lotus will not see another week before the frost takes the leaves. I have been carrying the last of the buds in a bucket of rainwater down the length of the field each morning, because nobody else will bother, and because you always said a flower left in the wrong water sulks until it dies.

The pink ones came over from a nursery in Spalding in the crate with the tent poles. Eleven of them, each as wide as my palm, and they open only for the sun before noon, then fold up tight as if they have been told a secret. The grey leaves are the old ones, gone soft at the edges, lying flat on the mud like umbrellas somebody forgot. When the wind drops you can see rings spreading out from where the carp have been nosing about, and Mr Ostler says that is the water remembering it was once full.

Last night a boy from the rides asked me why I bothered with something that only lasts a day. I told him I was not sure, but I thought about it all through the stacking of the chairs. Maybe it is because a bloom that opens for an hour still gets to be the whole of its life, and nobody argues with it.

I have kept the best bud in a jar on the caravan step. It will be open by Sunday if the sun holds. Come and see it before we move on to Thetford.

Love, Pip