Tim Burton style character sleeve design

The inspector at Harwell Crossing has opened every box in the lorry twice now, and he is still not satisfied with the teacups. There are forty-two of them, wrapped in my mother's old petticoats, each one painted with a pale spade and a swirl of gold. He held one up to the lamp and asked whether the tea inside was for drinking or for reading. I told him the truth, that nobody I knew had ever read a teacup, and he laughed and let them through. The grinning skeleton in the top box he did not laugh at. It sat in its bow tie on the seat beside me and grinned back at him, and he moved on very quickly.

The doll is the difficulty. Mr Quill, who bought the pins off me in March, wants it back before the thaw, and I have carried it across three borders with its belly full of rusted pins, one for every promise he says he never made. I keep thinking I should drop it in the river at Harwell, but the bat-winged thing painted on the lid of the last crate flaps whenever the wind comes off the water, and I cannot bring myself to leave it behind.

Tomorrow the lorry goes on to the coast, and the teacups will sit in Mr Quill's shop under a sign that reads Tea Served Only To The Patient. I will not be going with them. The girl with the ribbon in her hair from the next carriage keeps asking me for a cup, so I have given her an empty one, and she seems content with that. Keep my room warm. I will write from the ferry, if they let me keep the pen.

Yours, Ada