Tiger emerging on a forearm

The frost has got into the lower barn so badly that Dad has given up on the old whitewash and started scraping it back himself, a bit each evening with the flat of a shovel. You'll remember the wall by the feed bins, the one Granny painted over after the war when she wanted the place to look respectable for the Hendersons. Well, the plaster came away in a sheet on Tuesday, and there was a tiger underneath it.

It isn't a painting, not exactly. Dad says it was done in ochre and something darker, the stripes laid on with a brush that had gone dry, and the eyes are the strange part. They are two pale amber ovals that seem to follow you down the aisle when you carry the hay. A paw comes out from under the lower boards, and the plaster around the edges has curled back like skin off a scald. Mum won't go in after dark. I think she is being silly, though I did put the lamp on the bench and leave it burning.

The vet came out for the heifer and stood looking at the wall a long time with his cap in his hands. He said a travelling show used to winter in the valley, a man called Pascoe with a cat act, and that Granny worked for him as a girl before she ever came to the farm. Nobody in this family ever talked about it. She never said one word about cats.

Last night I went out with the torch and the wall was just wall. There was only a fresh tear in the plaster above the paw, and something pale stuck in the gap, a scrap of ribbon with Granny's handwriting on it. It said 'Come back when the frost is out.' I have put it in the tin with your letters. Write soon, and tell me if the city has any snow left in it.

Love, Ada