Small daisy tattoo on the hand

The lane has been shut since Tuesday, so the carrier has not come and the post is somewhere under the drifts between here and Hayfield. Mother says the coal will last until Sunday if we are careful, and we have been careful, which means I have eaten more porridge than any girl should. The guests are snowbound too: a surveyor from Stockport who talks about drainage in his sleep, and two sisters who arrived with a dog called Biscuit and have not left the fire since.

Yesterday I went out to the woodpile with the lantern and found the old stone trough buried to its rim. Under the crust, by the gate, something had come up anyway: a single daisy, the small kind with the bent stem that grows where the cow mud is. I know it should be dead. It had one leaf still green and the stem curled over as if it was trying to read the ground. I cut it, brought it in and put it in the teapot on the sill, where the glass is warm enough to thaw a finger.

I am writing this at the table with the daisy beside the inkwell. Father would have laughed and said flowers in January are a sign of trouble, but the surveyor came down this morning, looked at it for a long time, and said it reminded him of his mother's garden in Macclesfield. He asked if he could keep a petal. I said no, but I let him have the leaf.

Come home when the road opens. Bring the good tea, not the cheap stuff from the Co-op. The daisy will be gone by then, I expect, but I have pressed one of its neighbours in the back of the ledger, so you will have to take my word for it.

Love, Nell