Smile script with three butterflies

The sign went up on the harbour wall on Tuesday, the one Mr Corran promised you in the summer. He had it painted in black across the whitewash of the boathouse, SMILE in that looping hand he uses for the tide tables, with three butterflies he insisted on: one above the S, one perched by the L, one down near the slipway where the gulls will mess on it before the month is out. I told him the butterflies were for the bairns. He said they were for anyone who needed reminding that things come up out of the grey.

Half the island came down to look. Mrs Haddow called it daft, then stood in front of it for ten minutes with her shopping going cold in her hands. The ferry man photographed it for his wife in Oban. Nobody said much. That is how it goes here.

I went down this morning with a tin of gloss and a brush, because the mist had got into the curl of the S and the wind had lifted one wing clean off the wall. I stood on an upturned crate and worked the paint in slowly, the way you taught me to do a hem, and a butterfly drifted across from the heather as if it had been waiting to see whether I would finish.

I have tucked a scrap of the spare paint in the envelope. Keep it on your windowsill in Glasgow. When the weather turns, look at it and try to do what the word asks.

Love, Morag