Ribbon with angel wings and halo on upper back

You will not believe who turned up at the Coronation Park gates on Saturday with a carrier bag full of ribbon. Gwen Pritchard, still wearing the yellow mac she had in the fourth form, asked for you before she asked for a cup of tea. I told her you'd gone to Cornwall with the Tanners and never sent a postcard, which is what you deserve.

The reunion was a fair muddle of name badges and warm sherry. But Gwen had made a kite for the field behind the old Hollins school, a proper one. Two loops of pink and teal silk crossed over each other like a knot you'd never untie, with grey paper wings pasted on either side and a little wire halo bent above the crossing so it caught the light. She'd lettered a word across the pink strip in gold pen. Mom, it said. We were all too polite to ask whose.

Halfway through the afternoon the wind came off the reservoir and the thing slipped clean out of her hands. We watched it climb over the hedge, paper wings working like a bird that had forgotten how. Nobody ran. Dennis Oakes just stood there holding his paper plate, grinning like a boy again.

Write back and tell me you'll come next year. I'll save you the sherry glass with the chip in it. Yours, Bea