Shaded rose with lace and beads on upper arm

You'll not believe what Mrs Achterberg left in the wagon when she went on to Shrewsbury. Sixty-two yards of black Chantilly lace, folded in tissue paper, and a biscuit tin of glass beads sorted by colour, which I've spent three evenings threading. The old woman never once told me she'd been a lacemaker before she ran the hoop-la. I thought she was just cross.

Dad says the fair goes south at the end of the month regardless, so I've got until Thursday to finish the piece she wanted made for the rose-seller's grave. Her husband grew grey roses in a glasshouse in Bolton, never any colour, only shades. She wanted them drawn the same way, petal by petal, so the light stays where it falls.

Last night I sat up with the lamp and the lace across my knees, and the roses kept coming out wrong, too bright, too pink, until I stopped trying to be pretty and just shaded them like rain on a window. By two I had one that looked like it might open. I hung the beads from the bottom edge the way she showed me, in strands that drop like water off a gutter, with a little heart at the end of each so they'd catch the lamp.

I'm sending the drawing in this envelope, so keep it flat. Don't let Dad see it, he'll say I've wasted good card. I think she'd have liked it. I think she'd have said the middle petals were too soft, and she'd have been right, and I'd have liked her all the more for saying so.