Two dreamcatchers with feathers across the back

The hoops are still hanging over the back bedroom door, though the feathers have gone the colour of weak tea from the damp in that room. Your mam wove the webs herself the winter before the colliery closed, red wool through the willow, and every night she told you the bad dreams would snag in the middle while the good ones slipped through the holes. You believed her. I used to sit on the landing and count the little beads on the cord that ran across the ceiling, one for every shift your grandad worked that month.

The cage came up at six on the Thursday with only three men in it. Your grandad was not one of them, and nobody at the top would say his name the way it should have been said. Mrs Pryce from number nine brought a pan of broth and sat on our step until the light went. She said nothing useful, which was the most useful thing anyone did that week.

You wrote that the bunks on the ship are narrow and the nights are loud, and that you can't sleep without something tucked under your pillow. I took the hoops down last night to dust them, and one of the small grey feathers came loose and drifted onto the kitchen table as if it had been waiting for permission. I've put it in this envelope.

Sleep with it under your pillow. If anything gets through the net, it can come back here and tell me about it.

Love, Nan