White ink mandala on a forearm

The ballroom at the Pavilion smelled of Brylcreem and wet coats when Mr Okonedo finally let us stop for the interval, and I have been sitting on the back step ever since with your mother's old lace tablecloth folded across my knees, trying to make the pattern in my head line up with what I saw on the floor. You will laugh, but it was the dancers' hems that did it. Every skirt flared out in rings, scalloped and layered, and where the lights caught the white net you could see the petals open and close like a clock face turning.

Nell Parr, who runs the sewing room at the Co-op, sat beside me and said the trick of a good medallion is to start at the middle and never trust your first ring. She showed me by pricking a dot in the centre of a square of paper with a pin, then working out in widening circles, each petal a little fuller than the one before. Her hands never shook. She said white thread shows every mistake, so you learn to be honest with yourself early.

I thought of that when the band struck up again and a young man in a borrowed suit crossed the floor to ask for the waltz. He held his partner's wrist as if it were the only fixed point in the room, and the two of them turned in one slow ring until the whole hall seemed to spin around them like a pattern drawn from a single dot.

Anyway, I have decided to finish that tablecloth before the autumn dance. I am starting in the middle, and I am not going to hurry the petals. Come home at Easter and tell me if I have got the centre right.

Love, Maud