Two hands reaching across a forearm

The pass closed on Tuesday and the road has stayed shut since, so we have eleven guests and a cellar full of pears I should have sold in October. The last to arrive was a woman called Marguerite Halse, who came up the lane on foot with a carpet bag and no coat, and who has spent three evenings at the end of the bar with a pencil and the back of the tide tables from Dad's old drawer. She will not tell anyone what she is drawing.

Last night the ceiling in the snug gave a crack like a rifle and the power went, so we sat by the range with the lamps lit and the storm tapping at the shutters. Mrs Halse turned her pad round to show me. Two hands, one palm down above, one palm up below, the fingers of the top one just grazing the wrist of the other as though one of them had thought better of letting go. She had drawn the knuckles with a little dent each, the way Mum used to do on our drawings.

"That's you and me," she said. "Not quite touching. I keep meaning to finish it."

I asked what she meant by not quite. She said her sister had gone north to the ferry port eleven years ago with a promise to send for her, and the letter never came, and she had decided this winter that she would stop waiting for the hand to come down. This morning the thaw broke. She has gone, leaving the pad on the bar with the drawing finished. The lower hand is open now, cupped, ready. I have pinned it above the till where the post comes in. Write when the road's clear, and come home for Easter, you great fool.