Symmetrical bird and floral design on the chest

The landlady has finally let me have the back room with the good window, though it cost me the silver-backed brush you gave me, which I am sorry about. Do not scold. From here I can see the pier and the gulls working the tide line, and the rose bushes Mrs Pell keeps against the wall, the ones that look half-drowned by the salt. Yesterday I tried to draw them and gave up after the third bloom, because every petal wanted a twin.

That is the trouble with this house. Everything here comes in pairs. The two brass lamps at the foot of the stairs, the spinsters from Leeds who take the same chairs each evening and finish each other's sentences, the two bramblefinches that come to the sill at six, each with a bee-coloured smudge on its wing. This morning I folded a sheet of my ink-washed paper in half and pressed it flat. When I opened it, two birds stood with their wings held out, roses bowed beneath them like a pair of lanterns. I laughed out loud, and Mr Hale asked whether I had received bad news.

I have decided to keep the paper. It is the only honest picture I have made since I came here, because it did not need me to finish it. Half of it was done by the fold itself, and the other half was done by the part of me that was willing to leave it alone.

Write when the post reaches you. Tell me whether the swallows have gone from the eaves at home.

Yours, with salt in my hair, Clara