Realistic tiger head on a calf

The road over the tops closed on Tuesday and has not reopened, so you will have to forgive the state of this paper. The landlord has let us use the back parlour for writing, since the fire in the front room smokes whenever the wind swings north. Mrs Hebden has baked every morning as if the snow were a siege, and the guests have taken to playing cards for matches because the coal is counted out by the scuttle.

The strangest of them is the man from the travelling menagerie who arrived with the carter on Wednesday, half-frozen, with a crate he would not let anyone open. He said the tiger inside had come off a ship at Liverpool and was too old to perform. At night we heard it breathing through the boards of the stable loft, long slow breaths like a bellows. Yesterday the crate was found empty, and the man sat by the hearth with his hands round a cup of brandy, saying only that she had gone out to look at the snow and would come back when she was hungry.

She came back this morning, and I cannot stop thinking about it. She crossed the yard in the blue light with the drifts up to her shoulders, stopped beneath the lamp, and turned her head to look at the inn windows as though she were counting us. Her stripes were black as wet slate against the white. Then she looked away towards the moor, and I understood she had only been waiting for the road to clear, the same as the rest of us.

Mr Pell has gone out with a shovel to open the lane. I expect to see you at Easter, if the snowploughs allow it.

Your loving sister, Harriet