Realistic rose on shoulder blade

You will not believe what Mrs Calloway has done with the back parlour. She has stripped the damask off the walls and papered them in a pale cream that she says is the colour of the inside of a gardenia, though I have never seen a gardenia that did not look like a bruise. The guests complain about the damp. I tell them it is the sea breathing through the plaster, which is nonsense, but it keeps them quiet over breakfast.

Mr Tarrant from room four came down on Tuesday with his collar open and asked whether anyone in the house could draw. He wanted a rose sketched on a sheet of card, and he would not say for whom. I lent him the good pencils from the bureau drawer. He sat at the end of the table for three hours, softening the petals with his thumb, and when he finished the thing looked so alive that the cat crossed the cloth to sniff it and then sulked off.

Then the storm came in on Thursday and took the pier's last lamp, the card got wet on the front step, and he has not come down since. His door is locked. This morning I left a tray outside and it was taken in, the plate scraped clean, and under the saucer lay the drawing, dried and curled at the corners, with one line written along the edge of the leaves: keep the green darker than you think.

I have propped it on the mantel. I don't know what he means to do with it, or whether he means anything at all. Come in August. Bring your own pencils, because I am not giving mine back.

Love, Edie