Realistic rose with mandala linework on forearm

Mam says the rose windows at St Aidan's have finally been cleaned, the grey gone off them after thirty years of pit smoke, and you'd not know the glass underneath was red. I stood under them on Sunday with my hands in my coat and thought of you, counting the dots on the lace Gran used to crochet, those little stitches that went round and round like they had nowhere to be. You always said I'd never sit still long enough to finish a thing.

The pit has had two more lads taken to the cottage hospital since you went. Nothing dreadful, Mr Dunn says, a roof fall that barely grazed them, but the wives have gone quiet at the pay window and nobody sings on the bank any more. Mrs Hebden's boy has taken to drawing on the back of the coal tickets, roses mostly, shaded with a thumb dipped in the grate. I asked him why roses and he said nobody down there grows anything, so they must be worth more.

I went up the allotment yesterday. Your bush is still standing by the wall, the one you planted the spring before you left, and it has one bloom, dark as a bruise, nearly black at the heart. I cut it and put it in the jam jar on the sill, and the lamp-room light catches the petals the way the sun used to catch the leaves on the Sunderland road. I've shaded the drawing you asked for, the one with the ornaments round the edge. It came out crooked, but I kept the dots.

Come home at Christmas if they'll let you. The rose is waiting and so am I. Love, Nell