Stay Strong script on wrist

Mum has finally stopped asking when you're home, so I suppose that's progress of a sort. The wireless man came round on Tuesday and mended the set, and she sat beside it all evening pretending she wasn't listening for your name on the forces programme. I told her the post from Cyprus is slow and nobody writes on the day they mean to. She said it was the first sensible thing I'd said since Easter.

Mr Pargeter has painted the front of the chapel hall, which the Women's Institute calls a scandal because the colour is the blue of a bread van. The Coronation bunting outside the Co-op has faded to pink, and nobody has the heart to take it down. Jean Hollis walked out with the Dunmore boy on Saturday and came home with her hair in a state. I'm not telling you for gossip. I'm telling you so you know the town is still here, still talking, still waiting on the bus from Lincoln like it always does.

You wrote that the nights are long and the lads don't sleep. So here is my plan: keep your boots dry, keep your head down, and when it gets bad, think of the platform at Lincoln and what you said to me before the train pulled out. Stay strong, you said, and I said I'd hold you to it.

Enclosed is a little paper heart I cut from the lining of Dad's old tin. It won't survive the post, I expect, but you'll know what it means.

Yours, and not a day late, Nell