Pocket watch and roses design sketch

The frost came down on Tuesday and hasn't lifted since, so the yard is a sheet of grey glass and I've been chipping the trough ice with the flat iron before the milking. Your father's watch is still on the kitchen windowsill where you left it, face up, with its little bead chain coiled round the case like something he'd meant to finish. I haven't touched it. I keep meaning to.

Hollis from the auction house came out on Thursday to price the heifers and asked after the clock on the dresser. I told him it wasn't for sale. He wanted to know whether the roses round the case were hand-drawn or stamped, and I hadn't an answer, because I'd never once turned the thing over. Your father bought it the spring we married, from a man in Kendal who swore the works were older than the house. We never had it seen to. We just let it be right more or less and checked it against the wireless.

Last night I opened the case to see whether the cold had seized the works. Inside the lid, in his square pencil, was the date you were born, and beneath it a line of figures he'd copied from the watchmaker. The hands still said twenty past four. That's when the cow calved in the bad winter and he sat up with her all night, swearing he'd never let a clock run ahead of him again.

I wound it this morning, gently, the way he did, and set it by the radio. It's ten to seven now and the light is only just getting into the yard. There's no hurry on the clock. There is on the lambing. Come when you can.

Love, Mum