Rose and star tattoos with raised arms

You will not believe who came through the ticket hatch on Tuesday with the rain still running off her coat. Forty minutes before the last up train, a woman asked me for a single to Carlisle and then, while I was counting out the change, asked whether the station master still kept the old rose bushes behind the goods shed. I told her they had been dug out in the spring. She said roses don't really die if you leave a cutting in a jar of water, and I thought of Father's jar on the windowsill and said nothing.

She had a tin with her, the kind Uncle Ted used for his boot polish, with a rose pressed on the lid in red and pink paint gone soft at the edges. Inside were stems wrapped in newspaper from March. She asked if the guard on the Carlisle train would take a parcel for the signalman's widow at Kirkby. I said he would, for a shilling, and she gave me two.

Then the 4.10 pulled in late, the way it does, and she was gone before the whistle, leaving the tin on the bench. I opened it after the platform cleared. Under the stems was a card in a neat hand: Sorry for the delay. Keep one for yourself. There were stars drawn in pencil along the margin, five points each, and I have been wondering all week which of us was meant to be the one who waited.