Pocket watch, feathers and rose across the back

The watch came in on Tuesday, wrapped in a pillowcase and smelling of bleach, with its hands stopped at twenty past four. Mrs Pryce said her father had carried it into the mill every morning for forty years and never once wound it on a Sunday. I told her the mainspring was tired, which is what I tell everyone, and she laughed the way you laugh at a joke you have heard before. It's open on the bench now under the lamp, and I keep thinking about you.

The inside is better than the outside. Someone engraved a small wreath on the balance cock, and tucked under the dial there is a folded slip of paper, brown as stewed tea, with a line in pencil: You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have. No name, no date. I copied it onto the back of an invoice because I didn't trust myself to remember it right, and I've read it four times since, which is three more than I read your last letter.

I cleaned the movement on Wednesday night with the window open. Moths came in off Dock Road, and then a few pale butterflies from somewhere, ridiculous in October, and they settled on the glass as if they wanted a turn at the repair. I let them. The rose in Mum's old tin pot on the sill dropped a petal onto the escapement, and I didn't have the heart to brush it away, so it's in there now, still ticking.

I'm posting the watch back on Monday, wound and running, with the slip tucked where she'll find it. Come and collect Dad's pocket watch from the drawer, the one you never asked for. I'll have it ready for you. Yours, Ned.