Quote tattoo running down the spine

The ferry didn't come on Tuesday, so the post has been sitting in Mrs Corrie's kitchen with the tide tables and a jar of mint jelly. I have your letter about the flat in Leith. Yes, the damp is terrible, but you always did want a view of the sea from a bed you could not get out of. Take the room at the back, the one with the window that sticks.

Father's boat is still on the slip. Donald says it will not float again without new planking, and I have stopped arguing with the wood. Last night I found his old notebook under the settle, the one where he wrote down weather and fish and nothing else. On the last page, in pencil gone silver, he had copied out a line from the book Mother used to read us in winter: To live would be an awfully big adventure. Beside it he had drawn two small stars, the sort you make when you are trying not to fall asleep.

I have been turning that over all week, and about how little adventure there is in cutting peat and salting mackerel. Then I thought of you on the mainland, with your night shifts and your bus timetables, and I realised you have been out in the wide water all along, and I have only been watching the pier.

So I am coming over on the Thursday crossing, whatever Donald says about the swell. Keep the kettle on. I will bring the notebook.

Love, Isla