Teapot and flower flash design

I didn't say it at the reunion, with everyone shouting over the buffet, but I still have the teapot. The brown one from Mrs Haddow's home economics room, the one with the chipped spout we swore was haunted. I found it at the back of the cupboard when I was clearing Mum's kitchen, wrapped in a tea towel that still smelled of disinfectant. Nobody had used it since we left.

I brought it to the reunion in a carrier bag, meaning to show Gary Pike, who never stopped going on about the time we flooded the science block. He was too busy with his crisps to look. Instead I ended up at the back table with Sandra Webb, who told me she'd been a nurse for thirty-one years and had never once sat down properly for a cup of tea. We drank the stewed urn tea out of paper cups, and she laughed so hard she had to hold on to the table.

Here's what I wanted to tell you. On the base of the pot, scratched in with a compass point, someone had written B.L. and a little sun. Brenda Lowe, who sat behind us and drew roses on her pencil case. I'd forgotten her completely until I saw those initials. I think she painted that flower in the middle too, with rays coming off it as if she was trying to make it shine.

I've put the pot on my windowsill now, filled with water and nothing else. Sandra is sending me her number, and Brenda's sister has promised to tell me where she lives. Come up at Easter and I'll make you a proper cup, the kind we never got to have in that classroom.

Love, Maureen