Quote and cloaked figure on a forearm

The big top came down on Tuesday, and the last thing the men did before they loaded the lorries was sit on the grey rock by the car park as if it owed them money. You'd have laughed. Mr Ashdown still insists the thing is a meteorite, though he has never once managed to lift it, and the boys have taken to calling it the Doorstep because it's where everyone stops to argue about wages.

I've been sorting the wardrobe trunks. Under the old travelling cloak with the mended hem I found the programme from the winter season, the one where you stood in the spotlight wearing your father's cape and made the ringmaster's ledger vanish. Nobody in the crowd knew it was a trick of the light and a brass clasp. They cheered anyway. That is the only sort of magic I ever trusted.

Mr Ashdown came by this morning with an envelope. The bank wants the animals sold, the ring sold, and the name sold, and he wants me to sign for the rock too, which made me laugh until I had to sit down. I told him what I've always told you. The show was never the tent. It is what we do when the tent is gone.

I'm staying until the last field is cleared. Come up at the weekend if you can. I'll be sitting on the Doorstep, reading the old handbills aloud to the gulls, and I'll save you the end of the bill.

Love, Mum