Realistic scorpion on a shoulder blade

The wasps have finally given up on the windfalls, so I am writing this on the back step with the cider press ticking behind me. Dad's stone carver came up from Hereford on Tuesday, a silent man called Pryce who rolls his own cigarettes and will not let anyone touch his chisels. He spent three days in the old barn shaping a scorpion out of a grey block he hauled in on the trailer, and he would not say why a scorpion, of all things, for a Herefordshire orchard.

It is nearly finished. Its tail rears over the top like a question mark that has learned to bite, every segment ridged so precisely you would swear the thing had stiffened mid-strike. Its pincers are open across the lintel of the press. Pryce keeps saying it must be seen in low light, that the grey only lifts off it when the sun drops behind the Malverns and the stone remembers it was once a living thing.

Last night I went out with a torch and found Mum's apple crate tipped over, and under it a real one, pale and no longer than my thumb, sheltering from the damp. I laughed at first, then didn't. It had turned to face me with its tail curled exactly as Pryce had carved his, as if one of them had copied the other. I put a jam jar over it and carried it to the hedge.

Pryce says the scorpion is a guardian. I think he means the press is worth guarding, and that the Bramleys will be ready soon. He has asked me to sign the base, and I still haven't decided what to write. Come home before the picking starts, and bring the good scissors.

Love, Bea