Small flower tattoo on the ribs

You will not believe the morning I have had. The bride's aunt arrived at seven insisting the peonies were the wrong shade of cream, and by eight Mr Pargeter had reversed the van into the lych gate. I have been up to my elbows in wet stems ever since, which is why you are getting a letter instead of the telephone call you wanted.

Here is the strange part. When I stripped the church pews on Friday I found a single stem tucked behind the organ, wrapped in a strip of pale ribbon with no card. Three buds on a stem no longer than my hand, the thinnest green thread you ever saw, the flowers barely open. Nobody on the list ordered it, and Mrs Hollis swears it was not hers. I put it in a jam jar on the vestry windowsill, and it has held its head up better than anything we delivered.

I have decided it belongs to the groom's grandmother, who sat alone in the third pew with her gloves folded in her lap and watched the choir as though she were counting them. She left before the register was signed. Perhaps she grew it in a window box in Ashby and kept one back from the bunch she brought, for a wedding she did not quite want to attend.

I am taking the jar home tonight. Come and see it before the buds open and it becomes just another flower. Bring the good scissors.

Love, Bea