Shaded tulip on the ribs

I drew it the way my mother taught me, letting the petals go see-through where they overlapped, so the stem could still be seen through the cup of the bloom. The pencil was worn to a nub and smudged easily, so I rubbed it across the petals with my thumb to soften them. Teddy watched with his hat in both hands, as if I were performing surgery. When I finished he held the card up to the cloakroom bulb and laughed, because the flower looked like it was made of smoke.

He came back every Saturday for a month, and every Saturday he asked for a tulip, and every Saturday I drew one a little differently: a bud closed tight, then one half open, then one with a second stem leaning in from the edge as if someone had walked past it. I kept the cards in a biscuit tin under the counter. Nobody else ever asked for them, and I never asked Teddy why he wanted so many.

The last one he asked for was on the Saturday the hall closed for good. He folded it twice and slid it into his breast pocket without looking at it. Years later, when the Coronet was a carpet warehouse and I was too old to dance, a parcel arrived with his handwriting on the front, and inside was that card, soft at the folds, the grey stem still showing through the petals when I held it up to the window.