Purple lily on upper back

They took the bulb off me at Dover, which I suppose was fair enough, though the officer held it up to the strip light as if it might tick. Mum had packed it in wet newspaper with a note saying it was for Gran's grave. He read the note twice and asked whether a grave was a crop. I said it was a lily, the lilac one Dad grew by the shed, and he said speckles were a matter for the agriculture people and sent me to sit beside a vending machine with no coins in it.

The waiting room smelt of floor polish and somebody's stewed tea. Through the window the lorries stood in rows with their flanks gone soft in the drizzle, shadowed at the edges the way Dad always shaded his petals, so the whole lot seemed to lift off the glass. I kept thinking about his hands at the kitchen table, how he would dab the centre pale and then go back for the dark freckles on the stamens with the finest brush he owned, swearing under his breath whenever one ran.

The agriculture man came back at half four with a clipboard and a form asking for the botanical name. I didn't know it. Dad never called it anything but the lily that came up the spring you were born. I told him so, and he looked at the stems, slender and green in their wet paper, then at me, and wrote something I could not read upside down. He stamped the form, slid the bulb back into its box and said Gran would be pleased to have it.

I'm on the coach now with the box on my knees. The stems have stayed green all the way from the port, which seems the only thing that did what it was told. I'll see you Thursday. Bring the good scissors.

Love, Ros