Then sings my soul script lettering

The big top came down in Shrewsbury on Tuesday, and the generator has been sulking ever since, so forgive the smudges. Ruby has taken the lettering off the caravan door to repaint it, which is why this paper smells of turpentine. She says the words must stay in grey, not gold, because gold shouts and the old hymn needs a quieter hand.

You'll remember the hymn. Pa used to hum it over the calliope before the Sunday show, when the lads were still hungover from the night before. Then sings my soul. Ruby found the line scratched inside the organ's lid in his pencil, and she traced it out in her best hand, curling the S like a ram's horn and letting the tail of the g swing down under the others like a rope off a mast.

Last night the rain came sideways across the dodgems and the ghost train stalled with three children screaming inside it. I stood by the generator with the tarpaulin flapping and sang the verse, badly, because I never did learn the second line. A little girl from the queue came over and finished it for me, every word right, though she'd learnt it from a different church altogether.

I'm sending you the page Ruby copied it on, folded small. Keep it somewhere dry. We pull out for the coast at dawn and the road is long, but I've decided the soul gets a say in where we go.

Yours in lamplight, Edie