Purple awareness ribbon with swirl wings

The Pemberton Brothers' Travelling Circus has finally sold the big top to a scrapyard in Lincoln, so this is the last letter I'll write from the wardrobe wagon. Mr Ash says the animals go to a farm near Boston and the aerialists go wherever they can get a booking. I have the sewing machine, a tin of hooks and eyes, and the costume trunk nobody has claimed since 1987.

Last night I found the purple dress in the bottom of it. Do you remember it, the one Gwen wore for the butterfly act? Black swirls stitched down the bodice like smoke, and a ribbon of violet silk across the front that she insisted on, though nobody knew what it was for. The zip had jammed at the waist. Forty years of damp had gone into the teeth. I worked the slider free with a bent hairpin and a bar of soap, and when it finally ran, a tiny brass heart fell out of the lining onto my knee.

I put it on the windowsill beside the cracked mug. It was Gwen's, I'm sure of it, sewn in by someone who wanted her to have something small to hold during the drop. I haven't told Mr Ash. He'd only say it was junk.

I'm mending the dress tonight so it can go in the last box to the farm. Come and see it before it goes, if you can get leave from the hospital. Bring the good scissors.

Love, Edie