Traditional flash sheet with anchor, hands and banners

I'd sat with her since midnight, curtain half drawn, the monitor blinking green in the dark. She wore two cheap brass bangles that clacked whenever she moved, and she kept reaching for my hand the way a child reaches for a banister. Around half two her grip went slack, then came back firm as a handshake at a wedding. I held on. You don't let go on nights. I talked her through the price of coal and the Saturday bus to Rhyl, and she laughed once, quiet as a dropped spoon, and that was the last of it.

Afterwards I sat in the office with the form that wants cause and time. Frank the porter came in with two mugs and an envelope from the post room, addressed to her son in careful copperplate and never posted. Inside, on a single sheet, she'd written: 'This is my open letter. Read it before you go telling the vicar anything.' Her wishes were plain. Her ashes off the end of the pier at Llandudno, and the sea could have what was left of her.

Frank read the last line out loud, then folded the sheet back along its creases. We didn't say much after that. I still keep that envelope in my locker, the stamp gone soft at one corner, and when the night runs long I take it out and look at the anchor she'd doodled on the flap in blue biro, its rope trailing off the edge of the paper.