Script quote along a forearm

The copybook came out of the bottom drawer yesterday, the one with the cracked marbled cover that Mother kept under the good tablecloths. Your name is on the inside flap in pencil, and under it is the same line she made us copy every Sunday until our wrists ached: live each day or die regretting the time you lost. I have no idea why she chose that one. The vicar never preached it, and she never once went to the coast, but there it is, forty pages of it in your round hand, getting neater as you grew.

I know you're sitting in that hut at the crossing with the officer who won't look up, and I know the queue behind you has been there since before dawn. So I'm writing this at the kitchen table with the kettle going cold, copying the line out again, slower this time, the way Mother taught us, with the loops kept tight and the tails low.

Mrs Probert from the post office says she can forward anything you send. She insists the sorting office in Carmarthen handles the parcels from over there now, though I don't believe her. Write on the back of whatever paper they give you, and tell me whether the officer ever looked up.

Enclosed is the page I copied. Keep it folded in your breast pocket where no stamp can reach it. Mother would have liked that, I think, though she would have said you ought to hurry.

Love, Nell