Pink rose tattoo from outline to colour

The rose you asked about has finally come right. Mrs Abbott wanted a bloom for her husband's stone and sent me a cutting from the old damask gone wild over the wall at Dunmere Lodge, where it runs out to the edge of Stallow Wood. I pricked the outline first, a fine dotted line on oiled paper, because the petals open so loosely that a solid stroke would lie. Every dot is a decision about where the light falls.

Mother would have laughed at my hands. The ink caps sat in a row by the window while I worked, and the paper picked up a bloom of blue whenever I breathed too near it. Mr Abbott's bees kept coming to the sill and knocking against the glass as if they had business with the drawing.

Then came the colour, which was the part I dreaded. I wash the petals pink first, then lilac where the shadow pools in the folds, working outward so the edges dissolve into the ground and no line stands up proud. Mrs Abbott watched from the doorway and said nothing, which I take as approval.

When the bloom was finished I held it to the window and the grey light came through the paper. It looked less like a rose than a thing remembered. I have wrapped it in tissue and will post it on Thursday. Keep the cutting you took from the wall. I think the wood will outlast us both.

Your sister, Hester