Skull and rose tattoo designs

I know you think I've gone soft, but I'm writing this at the kitchen table with the kettle going cold, because I couldn't sleep after Saturday. You missed the reunion. You missed Gary Pinder failing to remember the name of our headmistress, and you missed me wandering off down the back corridor of the old Ashgate hall, where they've stacked the broken music cabinets since the roof went.

That's where I found it. One cabinet door was still propped against the wall, its brass handles dotted and tarnished. Someone had painted a rose on it, layered round with lace made of tiny dots, and beneath the rose a skull wearing a crown of beads, its eyes filled in with solid ink. The paint was old, but the work was careful. I stood there for a long time, because I'd seen that kind of patience before. You sat on the radiator in the fourth form with a compass and a biro and spent a whole Tuesday stippling one petal so it looked like frost.

I asked Mr Holt, the caretaker, who'd painted it. He just shrugged and said the cabinet had come out of the store room that way, as if it had always been waiting for someone to notice. Gary reckoned it was a prank from the sixties. I didn't argue.

I've taken the door home. It's leaning against my hallway wall now, and every morning the light through the frosted glass catches the dots and makes the skull look like it's about to speak. I've decided it's yours, or at least that you owe me a cup of tea and an explanation. Ring me when you read this, and don't pretend you've forgotten the radiator.

Love, Jan