Realistic grey flower on the side of the ribs

You will want to know about the iris before anyone else tells you, so here it is. Mr Halloran brought it into the Palais on Thursday in a jam jar of rainwater, the stems wrapped in a page of last week's paper, and asked me to keep it behind the cloakroom counter until Saturday. He would not say who it was for. Nobody at the Palais ever says who a thing is for, which is how I know it is for someone.

Saturday came and the hall filled the way it always does, with the bandleader tuning his trumpet like a man trying to remember a hymn and the floor polished so hard you could see the glitter ball in it. At half past nine Mr Halloran came to the cloakroom, took the jar from me, and walked straight onto the floor. He did not dance. He stood at the edge of the bandstand and waited for Winifred Coyle to turn round, which she did, because the water was dripping off the petals onto the parquet and she is the only girl in Leeds who would notice a drip.

I could not hear what he said over the saxophones. I only saw her lift one hand and touch the bloom, very lightly, as if it might bruise, and a drop ran off the edge of a petal and down her wrist.

They danced the last waltz together. I have never seen Mr Halloran so pleased with himself, nor Winifred so sure she had been wronged. Yours, Peggy.