Watercolour floral tattoo on upper back

The rain got into the parlour again on Tuesday, so I've had to take the good sheet off the wall and lay it on the kitchen table to dry. You'll remember Davy's paints. He bought that tin of pans from the tinker's cart the summer before he started at the Hetton shaft, and he painted roses on every scrap of paper in the house because he said a man who spends eight hours underground needs something red to look at when he comes up.

The picture you asked after is the bunch he did on the back of the calendar. The roses went first, then the orange things he called poppies though Mam swore they were marigolds, and last of all the little blue ones he could never get the edges of. Where the water touched them on Tuesday they ran out into the paper like a bruise going soft, and I stood there with the kettle going cold and thought the colours had decided for themselves where they wanted to be.

Mr Hudspeth from the office came by to ask about the wages and saw the sheet drying and asked was it mine. I said it was my brother's and he looked at it a long while and said the pit had plenty of men who could draw nothing but coal. I didn't tell him Davy's hands were never quite steady after the fall.

I'm sending you the sheet rolled in brown paper. Hang it somewhere the sun gets to, and don't let anyone wipe the edges. They're meant to bleed a little. Since the rain came through, I think that's the only part of him that still moves.

Love, Nell