Sketched portrait with lightning bolt on back

The storm came over the top of Hollin Bank on Tuesday and took the wireless mast clean off, so you will have had no word from us since. Mam says the hens are laying again and the back door still sticks in wet weather. I have been sketching at the kitchen table to keep my hands busy while the lamp burns. I am enclosing the one I did of you from the photograph on the mantel, though I have made your hair wilder than it ever was. Mrs Pardoe says that is what happens when you draw from memory with a blunt pencil.

The red is from the box Miss Ardagh gave me at Christmas. I used it for the bolt because that is what the sky looked like over the spoil heap when it came down, a single crooked finger of light that hung on the tips for a whole breath before the thunder caught up. Then the shift bell went. Mr Galloway from the pit office came up our lane in his good shoes and stood at the gate without knocking, and I knew from the way he held his cap what he had come to say.

They had the men up by four, Tom. Your dad was on the second cage with Arthur Clough, and both of them came out coughing grit and swearing at the rain. Dad asked to see the drawing before he asked for his tea. He held it at arm's length, the way he reads the rule on the wall, and said the bolt was too tidy. The lightning he saw in the roof that night was never a straight line at all. It was all branches, like a tree that had decided to come down the shaft.

So I have left the sketch as it is, with the lines still broken and the turquoise dab by the ear where the paper slipped. Keep it in your breast pocket where the lamp oil cannot reach. Write when the mast is mended.

Your loving sister, Nell