Script quote on a forearm

The rain has been coming sideways across the market since Tuesday, and Mr Okafor has given up trying to keep the awning dry. I have sold four pairs of wellingtons and one cabbage, which is about what you would expect from a Thursday in November. Mum sends her love and says you are to wear the wool vest she knitted, not the thin one you packed for the Mediterranean.

Something happened on Saturday I have not stopped thinking about. A boy of about nine came to the stall with a pound coin and asked for a bag of the bruised apples, the ones we sell cheap. He said his grandad was waiting in the car park and could not walk the length of the market any more. I gave him three apples for the coin and he ran off. Twenty minutes later the grandad came himself, slow under a big black umbrella, and thanked me as if I had handed him a kingdom. Then he said, "Tell your brother the lights will guide him home," and walked away before I could ask what he meant.

I asked Mum about it that evening. She laughed, then went quiet, and said it was what Dad used to call out to the boats coming back past the harbour wall. You never told me that, I said. You were always out on the water when I was small, she said, and the words were his, not hers. I have been turning that over all week, and I am starting to think the old man was not talking about lamps at all.

So come home at Christmas, or at least write. The apples are still going cheap, and I am keeping the lamp above the stall lit late on your account.

Love, Ruth