Vintage Mickey Mouse on a forearm

The landlady here, Mrs Gorringe, has forbidden pencils at breakfast, so I am writing this in the back garden with the sea going on behind the wall like a gramophone nobody has turned off. You will want to know whether the mouse came back from the printers in one piece. He did. Mr Sayer checked every cel under the lamp and found one ear a shade too grey, so I sat up until two repainting it with the black ink Mr Sayer keeps locked in the cupboard, the one that smells of pear drops.

The boarding house is full of men from the works who think I am a secretary and women who think I am nothing at all, which suits me. Last night a boy from the third floor asked me to draw him something on the back of his cousin's postcard, so I did the mouse walking with one white glove tucked behind his back, the way the boy does when he is pretending he has not been caught at something. He laughed so hard he rolled off the bench.

Mr Sayer says the pose is wrong, that a character has to look like he is about to do something, not like he is waiting for a tram. I told him the tram was the whole point. Our mouse is always on his way somewhere and never quite arrives, and the round ears are there so you can spot him at the back of a crowded picture house even when the screen is too small to show his face.

Tell Dad the cheque came. I am keeping the rest for the train home, and for the shoes, which are the biggest and silliest things I have ever had to draw and which I would not trade for anything.

Love, Ada