White ink snowflake on a foot

The snow came in the night, which is not how it is supposed to happen here. Your old room has a window that faces the harbour, and when I went up to fetch the blankets I found the glass furred white at the corners, each pane crowded with ferns that I could not have drawn if I tried. Father would have called it a freak year. Mrs Lowther from the chandlery says it is the cold coming down from the north, the same wind that took the mackerel boats out past the breakwater in February.

Down on the quay the gulls were walking about in it as if they had been invited somewhere grand. I counted six boats still tied up, their rigging furred with frost, and I thought of the paper stars you cut for me the winter you left, six points each, folded so tight my fingers still ache when I remember. You said nobody ever sees two alike, so you would make me one that would be the only snowflake ever to fall on this town. I have it still, pinned behind the kitchen clock.

The strangest thing is the shore. The tide went out so far that the sand stretched almost to the lighthouse, and the frost lay on it like sugar, and nobody could say where the water had gone. Dad walked out with the lamp to look and came back grinning like a boy, his boots soaked through. He said the sea had simply stepped aside to let the winter pass.

I am sending you a photograph of the quay, though it will not show the cold properly. Tell me what the snow looks like where you are, and whether anyone there has heard of a town where the sea goes missing for an afternoon.

Love, Ingrid