Small elephant and hearts on ribs

The pit wheel stopped again this morning, so Dad has been sat on the step since six with his boots off, which he says is the nearest he gets to a holiday. I am writing because you asked whether Pritchard's still had the wooden elephant you used to buy for Ellen, and I went down on Tuesday to look. It is there still, on the top shelf behind the Bovril, its trunk chipped where it caught the bicycle lamp. He wanted a shilling. I told him sixpence and a kind word, and he took the sixpence and gave me the kind word back, which I thought was fair.

I carried it up the hill after, past the chapel and the slag heaps gone yellow with rain, and sat on the allotment wall where you can see the whole valley at once. Ellen came with me. She is nine now and too old for elephants, she says, but she held it anyway and asked why it was sitting down. I told her it was tired from carrying the hearts up the hill, which is what you told me when I was small. She laughed the way you laugh at something you already know is a lie.

The wind took the first heart out of her hand. We watched it go over the rooftops towards the tip, a scrap of card turning in the air, and she did not cry, which surprised me. She said the elephant would only make another one. She was right, because by the time we got home she had drawn three more in pencil on the back of the rent book, each one a little higher than the last.

Write when the wheel starts again. Dad sends his love and says the elephant is not to be sold to anyone from Abertillery.

Love, Megan