Watercolour sketch flower on a thigh

The paint box came up on the Tuesday carrier, wrapped in a copy of the Northern Echo, with a note from Mrs Hallam saying the colours were past their best but would do for a girl who had nothing else to look at. I have been at the kitchen table every night since, with the lamp turned low so Dad does not grumble about the oil. Half the sheets are spoiled already. The water runs where I do not want it, and the red bleeds into the blue like a bruise going yellow.

Mam says I should paint the pit wheel, since that is what everybody in Ashgill looks at all day. I drew it once. It came out like a cart wheel on a funeral dray, so I tore it up and tried the roses from the bush by the chapel wall instead. They would not sit still. Every petal turned into a circle, and every circle wanted another circle beside it, until the whole thing looked like three coins dropped in a puddle and trying to hold hands.

Then Mr Oakes came up from the back shift with his lamp still clipped to his cap and stood over my shoulder. He said it was the first thing he had seen in the village that did not smell of sulphur. He asked whether I might paint the flowers for the Institute window, the one with the crack down the middle. I said I would think on it. I have thought on it, and I have decided the circles can stay as they are.

Write soon. Tell me if the sea at Whitley is still that colour in the mornings, or if I have only been remembering it that way.

Your loving sister, Ada