Unicorn in an ornate frame on upper arm

The Bramleys are coming in heavy this year and Dad's ladder is still propped against the far wall where he left it in June, so I have been picking one-handed and thinking about the tin. You will remember it: the Peek Frean biscuit tin with the chipped lid that Aunt Maud kept her buttons in. I finally opened it properly on Sunday and found the cameo underneath the thimble.

It is smaller than I remembered, an oval of painted metal in a frame of grey scrollwork, the edges shaded so it looks carved. A white horse turns its head in profile with a spiralled horn and a mane the colour of a summer night, and someone has dotted little silver stars across its neck. Maud wore it on a black ribbon for every funeral I can recall. She always said a man in Ludlow painted it for her when she was seventeen, a man who had only ever seen unicorns in his sleep.

You said it was rubbish when we cleared the house, so I will admit I nearly agreed. But the back has a pencilled line in her hand that I had never noticed: For J., when the sky goes blue over the trees. I took it out to the orchard at dusk and stood on the bottom rung of Dad's ladder to see over the wall, and the stars came out one at a time above the rows, exactly where she must have meant.

I have set the cameo on the windowsill facing the orchard. Come up for the picking if you can, and bring the ladder back to the shed while you are here, because I am not carrying it again on my own.

Love, Jo