Shaded diamond on the forearm

The lodger in the back attic has finally shown me what he keeps in his tin. Mr Halloran pays his rent in coins that smell of the sea, and on Tuesday he left the lid off while he was shaving. Inside, wrapped in a handkerchief the colour of weak tea, was a stone the size of a hen's egg. I held it to the window and the whole of Morecambe Bay came apart into a hundred little cuts of light.

Mother says it is paste and that I am to mind my own business. Mother has never once in her life minded her own business. But I looked at it properly, Peggy, and the facets were not bright at all. They were grey, like the inside of a mussel shell, and every edge had been shaded so carefully that it seemed to sit lower in the light than the glass around it.

Last night the storm took the chimney pot off the Crown and I could not sleep. I went down to the kitchen and found him there in his shirtsleeves, turning the stone under the lamp. He did not look angry. He said a diamond only shows you what the room is willing to give back, and then he laughed at himself and asked if I wanted toast.

I am writing this with the stone sitting on the sill beside me, because he has gone to Blackpool on the early tram and left the tin unlocked. I have not touched it. I have only counted the facets, forty-two on the top alone, and wondered which one of us is the reflection.

Your loving sister, Dora