Stylised Z symbol with affirmation text

The wind took the top off the big tent again at Scarborough, so we have been sleeping in the lorry with the dog between us like a hot water bottle. Mr Zeno has finally let me touch the sign. You remember the old chairoplane board, the one with the Z that Pa painted before the war, its letters gone grey as porridge. I scraped it back to bare wood at Filey and started again with a sable brush I borrowed from the Sutherlands' van and forgot to return.

He stood behind me the whole afternoon saying nothing, which for Mr Zeno is a kind of shouting. When I asked why the Z had two short strokes cut through its middle, he said they were there to let the wind out, the way a kite has a tail. The curved arcs round it are the swing of the chairs, he said, and the bold diagonal is the one part of the fair that never stops moving, even when the engine does.

At dusk he made me paint the line underneath, the one he says every new hand must learn before it is allowed a brush of its own. Ordinary handwriting, not sign-painter's capitals, so it looks like someone is speaking to you from the board. I am calm, open, and energized. I wrote it three times because the second and third wobbled, and he would not let me sign it until the letters stood still.

Tonight the chairs are going round in the dark with the lamps lit and the paint still tacky. I walked out past the ticket booth to look, and the Z was turning slowly, every letter in its place, and I swear it was saying the words back to me. Come home at the end of the season, Len. There is a seat with your name on it.

Love, Ada