Rose and geometric lines on a forearm

The surveyor came back from the edge of Harrow Wood on Tuesday with mud to his knees and a face like a shut gate. He would not say what the instrument had shown him, only that the triangle he had pegged out between the three oaks did not close. Mrs Pell at the forge says it has never closed. She says the old boundary stones were laid by someone who wanted the village to keep looking inward, and that the arrow pointing to the heart of the wood was never meant as a way in.

I went out myself at dusk with the brass compass you left behind. The needle spun like a drunk moth until I stood where a wild rose grew over the stile, its petals shaded black at the edges and heavy with dew. Its thorns were as neat as pen strokes. Beneath it the lines of the triangle ran down the bank, and where they met the path there was a small hard diamond of flint, the only stone for miles that did not belong to the ground.

I picked the flint up. It was warm, as if someone had only just set it down, and when I turned around the path behind me had gone grey and narrow, the way the lane to your old house used to before the hedges were cut back.

I am not coming back to the village tonight. I have left the lamp lit in the window so the wood can see we are still awake.

Yours, Nell