Watercolour hearts on two forearms

I finally got the lamp to stay on long enough to write this. The flat above the chip shop on Hyde Road smells of vinegar and turpentine, and tonight the rain has been running down the window in streaks that look like the washes you used to make on Sunday mornings, when you said the trick was to let the water do the work. I tried it on the kitchen table with the cheap tin of paints Dad left us. The orange went everywhere. The purple wouldn't sit still.

You'll think I've gone soft, but I drew the big heart first, on the back of the gas bill, pressing so hard the nib tore the paper. Then I let the colours run past its edges the way you taught me, red down one side, green pushing up from the corner like weather coming in off the moor. It looked like something spilled, and I thought, good, let it be spilled.

The small heart was the one that frightened me. Black outline, every line certain, and then I filled it with solid colour because I was tired of things being half done. Yellow in the lower lobe, red beneath it, pink climbing the middle. When I held the sheet up under the bulb it looked as if somebody had dropped a sweet into the paint pot and it had just set there.

I haven't decided which one I'll send you a photo of. Maybe both. Write back and tell me which one you'd keep on the wall, and whether the rain has stopped where you are.

Love, Nell