Planets and stars down a forearm

You will not believe the state of the Starlight Rooms since they repainted the ceiling. Mr Ambrose climbed up there with a ladder and a tin of Prussian blue and put the whole solar system above the dance floor, every planet the size of a dinner plate, with Saturn tilted over the bandstand like a hat. Mother says it's common. I say it's the only thing in Coldharbour Bay that's ever gone up instead of down.

Walter says the little dots scattered between the planets are stars that were there before the war, and the paint only hides them. He wants me to stand under the big black moon while the band plays "Moonglow" so I can see the orbit lines he has pencilled across the plaster, faint as hair. He says everything in the room is going round something else, the couples, the lamps, even the girl who sells lemonade. I told him that sounds like a dreadful way to live and he laughed and said it was the only way anyone managed.

Last Saturday he took my hand under Neptune and we went round three times without speaking. I counted the planets on the way. Seven, then the ringed one, then the little bright dot I can never name, and then his face again, the same every time.

Father's postcard came on Thursday, a picture of Blackpool with a windmill. He wrote that he has stopped drinking and taken a ship to Lagos. I have not told Mother. I have pinned it inside my hatbox, under the lining, where it can keep its own orbit.

Write back soon. Tell me if the sea is still grey there, and whether you have kept my green shoes.

Love, Iris