Wolf head with roses and pistols on the stomach

The frost has got into the water trough again, so I've been breaking it with the handle of the spade every morning before light. Dad's old revolver is still in the tin under the stairs where you left it, and I checked it the night the ewes started crying up on Bank Top. Nobody has come to fetch it, so it sits there with the cartridges gone green.

Something has been taking lambs from the far field. Mr Hebden at the auction swore it was a fox, but a fox doesn't leave a ewe lying open with the wool pulled in neat furrows. I went out with the lamp on Tuesday and saw it at the top wall, grey as the sky, head low and that ruff standing up like a collar. Its eyes caught the light and held it. I had the revolver in my coat pocket and my hand round it so tight my fingers went white.

I didn't fire. I stood in the snow until it turned and slipped back over the wall. In the morning the roses Mum planted by the gate had frost on every petal, which seemed a daft thing to notice. I left a bucket of offal by the wall instead, and the swallows that nest in the barn roof had gone quiet for the winter, so there was nobody to tell me I was a fool. Don't tell Hebden.

Come home at Christmas if you can, and bring nothing that needs a lamp.

Love, Jen