Triple spiral tribal design

You would not believe the Crescent on a Saturday now that the Carrolls have taken over the bandstand. Three brothers in grey suits who turn together like a clock somebody has wound too tight. Nobody dances with them. They just go round and round in the middle of the floor, each one spiralling into the next, and the crowd parts for them the way water parts for a stone.

Mrs Pryce at the cloakroom says they were thrown out of Cardiff for it. She says the middle brother, Tomas, never looks at his feet. I asked him once, when the band stopped and he came to the edge of the boards for his hat, why they kept to the same circle. He touched the small hole at the centre of their ring, the dot where the three lines met, and said a circle goes nowhere, but three turns make a door. I laughed at him. He did not laugh back.

Last night the lights failed at eleven and the room went black except for the bandsman's cigarette. In the dark I could hear the brothers' shoes still going, slower and slower, then one pair stopped, then another. When the lamps came up, Tomas was standing alone on the boards with his hat in his hands, and the other two were gone. Nobody saw them leave. The cloakroom door was locked from the inside.

I have not told Mother. I am writing so that someone knows the exact tune the band was playing, because I am frightened that if I forget it, the door may stay shut. Come on the twelfth. Bring your good shoes. We will go round together and see what opens.

Your loving sister, Gwen