Small palm tree on the side of the ribs

The coconut came in Tuesday's post, wrapped in three sheets of the Gazette and a note from your brother saying it had floated all the way from Barbados to Cornwall before anyone thought to fish it out. I have put it on the sill of the lamp room, because it will not sit still on the kitchen shelf and because the lamp room is the only warm place on this rock once the wind swings round to the north.

Mr Pascoe from the relief boat laughed when he saw it. He said nothing grows on Gannet Head except gulls and bad temper. I told him that was exactly what I had been saying for nineteen years, and that a bit of sun in the place might do us both good. He took his tea and went off down the steps still shaking his head.

The husk split in the second week. A pale green shoot came up through the crack, no thicker than a pencil, and it has been leaning towards the lamp every morning since, as if it has its own opinion about which way is up. I turn the nut a quarter each day so it grows straight, and each night it bends back towards the glass. I have stopped fighting it.

Last night the fog came in thick enough to hide the light from the mainland, and I stood at the gallery rail with my hand flat against the cold iron and thought of you on the sand at Porthcurno with a parasol and no coat. When the beam swept round, the little shoot threw its shadow across the sill, a clean black fan of fronds against the whitewash. I cannot tell you how much I wanted to be standing beneath it.

Write soon. Tell me the tide is still the same and that you have not been swimming in April.

Yours, Tom