Script quote reading Vienna waits for you on a wrist

The last of the trapeze rigging came down on Tuesday and the big top now sags over the fairground like a tent someone forgot to fold. Mrs Haldane has sold the elephant to a farm outside Ely, and the lion has gone to a man in Leeds who promises him a warm barn. Nobody has the heart to tell the children the show is finished. They keep asking me when we leave for the continent, as though it were a matter of packing a trunk.

I found your old ticket stub in the bottom of the wardrobe trunk, the one with the gilt corners that smells of camphor and sawdust. Written on the back in your careful hand: Vienna waits for you. I laughed until I cried, because you wrote it the night before you went off to Hamburg, and I had thought you were only being sentimental. Perhaps you were simply right.

So I have bought a third-class ticket on the Thursday boat to Ostend, and I have sewn the last of my spangles into the lining of my coat so they cannot be pawned. I will take the night train from Brussels with a cardboard suitcase and a letter of introduction from a man who owes Mrs Haldane money. If the Riesenrad still turns, I will ride it twice, once for you and once for the stubborn part of me that never stopped believing you would send for me.

Yours, always, Rosa

P.S. Tell the Ostrowskis I still have their scarf. It is only fair that the cold should have a good home.