Stay Strong script with heart on the wrist

The kettle has boiled twice since I started this, and Mrs Hebden has been at the window since breakfast, watching for the Carlisle bus. I told her you'd write when you were settled, and she said that was what people always said before they stopped writing altogether. I gave her the pear drops from your last parcel to shut her up.

Your father came in from the yard on Tuesday with his hand wrapped in an old shirt. The baler took the skin off two of his fingers, nothing deeper than that, but he sat at the table white as paper and would not let me look. Dr Pryce stitched it in the back room while the wireless played dance music nobody was listening to. He asked me to tell you not to fret. You know he would never say it himself.

I found your pencil case under the stairs when I was turning out the coats. On the lid, in blue biro, you'd written the words the way you used to copy out hymns: Stay Strong, with a little heart squashed in at the end, slightly crooked. I thought you'd grown out of that sort of thing. I sat on the bottom step for a good while holding it.

So here is what I want you to do. Get yourself a proper coat before the frost comes. Go to the chapel dances if the girls there are kind to you. Write on Sundays, even if it's only a postcard of the pier. And when the work is hard, remember you are not the only girl in those rooms trying to be brave. Love, Mam.