Whisper words of wisdom lettering

Your brother has sold the boat again, and I have stopped arguing about it. The rain has come in sideways all week, the kind that finds the gap under the door and sits on the flagstones as if it means to stay. I wrote three replies to your last letter and burned two of them in the range, which Mrs Fenwick says is a waste of good kindling.

Here is the thing I meant to tell you. On Tuesday the bell at St Aldric's cracked clean through, and the vicar sent for me because I have the steadiest hands in the parish, which is a lie, but I took the job anyway. Up in the tower, with the wind going through the louvres, I found an old scrap tucked behind the clapper rope. Someone had written in a slanting hand, very small: keep your voice low when the rest are shouting, and the loud ones will come round to you.

I laughed at that, up there alone with a hammer. Then I thought of Father, who never raised his voice once in forty years at the mill and still had every man in the valley turning to listen. I have decided the scrap was meant for me. I have been shouting at the flood, at the council, at the sky, and none of it has moved the water one inch.

So I am going to do as the note says. Tomorrow I will sit on the bank with a flask and say nothing at all, and let the river do the talking. Come up at Easter if the road holds. Bring the good ink. I want to copy that little note out properly for you, in my best hand, before the rain takes the tower down.

Your loving sister, Agnes