Snarling panther head flash

We limped into Boston on Tuesday with the big top sagging like wet washing and the generator coughing its last. Mr Harkness has promised the lorry will be fixed by Saturday, though he says that about everything, including the Duchess. You'll remember the Duchess: the black panther he bought off a sailor in Hull, the one who used to snarl at the front row until they cheered. She has been pacing her cage since we left Lincoln, and last night she gave the lad from the bumper cars such a roar he dropped a whole tray of toffee apples.

Nobody tells you the trick of it. You don't tame a cat like that, you just stop being afraid of her, and she can smell it on you the way she smells rain. I took her water myself this morning, which Harkness says I mustn't, and she watched me with those yellow eyes as if I were a tin she might like to open with her teeth. Her lip curled back over the fangs, all white and pink, and I stood very still and said good morning the way Father used to speak to the horses.

She let me set the bowl down. That was all. But when I turned round she was lying with her chin on her paws, looking at the patch of light coming through the canvas, and for a moment she looked less like a warning painted on a sign and more like something that had also come a long way from home.

Write soon, and tell Mum I am eating properly.

Love, Nell