Silhouetted figures in rainbow watercolour on forearm

The works at Ardcraig started up again on Monday, so the bay has gone striped in the mornings like a boiled sweet. Dad says the red comes out first and the yellow after, and by the time it reaches the Sgeir the whole tide is running green and gold. You would not believe the colour of it from the pier. Tam swears it tastes of rust, but he has said that about everything since the ferry.

We went down to the old slipway on Saturday, the three of us. Tam went first, arms out like a heron, and hit the blue in a long white splash. Then Ailsa, shrieking the whole way down, and last little Iain, who wouldn't jump until we promised he could hold my hand. He came up in the purple laughing so hard he swallowed half the bay. The current took us out past the rocks and we swam back along the streaks of colour as if somebody had thrown us ropes.

Mr Gillies shut the vats after the storm, though, and nobody has told us why. The water went grey on Tuesday and stayed grey. Last night I walked down alone with the torch and stood at the edge of the slipway a long time, waiting for something to come round the point, and nothing did except the tide and a gull with a crab.

I'm sending you a skein of the blue wool Mum dyed before they stopped, the one you liked. Come at Whitsun. If the works are running we'll jump together, and if they aren't, we'll make our own colours out of whatever the sea gives us.

Your cousin, Kirsty