Scottish lion crest with thistles and banners

The oven was already warm when I let myself in this morning, the back door sticking the way it always does in the frost. Mrs Rennie had left the tins out on the slab with their lids off, and I stood in the dark with my breath going up and counted forty-two shortbread rounds before the light came grey over the Forth. Each one still has the old wooden mould pressed into it: the lion up on his hind legs, one paw raised, tail curling over his back like a question. Mrs Rennie says the mould came from Dundee in 1931 and has never been cleaned properly, only brushed, so there is flour packed into the lion's mane that no sensible baker would tolerate.

Last week I asked her why the lion looked so cross. She laughed and said he was a Scottish lion, and that was what they looked like when they had been kept waiting. I have been thinking about that more than I should. You told me the same thing when I was eleven and wanted to leave for Glasgow: stand your ground, but mind the thistle, it bites back. I did not understand you then.

I am writing this on the back of a delivery note because I could not find the good paper, and because I wanted you to know the lion is still here, and so am I. Mrs Rennie wants me to take over the Saturday bakes in March. I said I would think about it. I have already thought about it. I have thought about it every morning since you stood at the window and told me to go.

Your loving son, Callum