Small red heart outline on a finger

Mam has put your boots by the range to dry, though you won't need them for a week, and I have not told her that the lamp-room man says water is coming up through the Four Foot again. She says a watched pot never boils and a watched pit never caves, which is the sort of thing she makes up when she is frightened.

I went to the fair on Saturday with Peggy Haig and a shilling of Dad's. There was a man in a yellow waistcoat with a cart full of bottles and a little brass box of ink, who pricked a heart onto my finger for threepence while Peggy held my wrist and told him to hurry. It is only small, the size of a lentil, and red as the cinder on the tip at sunset. He said the line would fade in a year if I washed my hands like a lady, so I have hardly washed them at all.

You will laugh, but when the hooter went at six this morning I pressed that finger to the kitchen window and thought of you under the ground with the same mark on your palm, pressed against the rock the way we used to press our hands together through the washing line. It is a daft way to keep a brother near. Still, the glass was cold and the mist came off the slag heap like breath, and the mark stayed on the pane a little while after I took my hand away.

Come up Friday and walk out with me to the fair if they give you the day. Bring the wages envelope, not the ale.

Your loving sister, Nell