Torn skin sleeve revealing a red and blue suit

The officer at Dover held the sleeve up to the strip light for a long time, turning it the way you would check a fish at the market. I had folded it into a tea towel and told him it was a bridesmaid's jacket, which was nearly true, since Mrs Okafor's girl wants the rest of her outfit by Saturday. He did not ask about the webbing. Nobody ever asks about the webbing.

You will remember the drawings I showed you at your kitchen table in Gdańsk, the ones where the skin peels back in ragged strips and the red and blue beneath look as if they have always been waiting there. I spent three weeks on that effect. The torn edges are stretched jersey cut on the bias, dyed the colour of old brick, then brushed with a dry comb so the fibres lift. The blue panels came from a bolt a theatre in Leeds sent back with a water stain on it. Nothing in this country goes to waste if you are patient with it.

The company wants it for a stage production, a hero who tears open in the second act and steps out in full colour. Their director telephoned me four times about the seams. He wanted them to hold under lights and still look ragged from the back row. I told him a seam only has to hold for the length of one scene, and that a good one can hold for years.

The officer finally nodded and waved the car on. I sat at the lights with the sleeve across my knees, feeling the stitches under my fingertips, and thought of the dressing room where it will be pulled on for the first time. Write soon, and tell Anna the blue thread she asked for is in the box under the sewing machine.