Wolf headdress woman pencil sketch

Rain again, the kind that sends the gutters on Argyle Street singing until dawn. I'm writing this on the back of a spare pawn ticket because the shop has been dead since midnight and Mr Okafor has gone out to see about his van. You'll laugh, but a man came in tonight with a wolf's head. Not a stuffed one. A headdress, cured hide with the snout still on and a little brass horn screwed over the brow. He wanted eight pounds. I offered a fiver and he looked at me as if I'd insulted his mother.

He had a silver disc on a chain as well, the size of a biscuit, stamped with the letters L and T and a row of tiny beads round the edge. He said it came with the headdress, that his nan wore the pair of them to the Saturday dances in Barrhead before the war, and that she'd made him promise to sell them only to someone who'd keep them dry. I put everything under the counter and went back to the ledger, but every time the shutter rattled I glanced over, half expecting the wolf to be watching me from the shelf.

When I finally picked up the pendant to log it, I turned it over and saw a small triangle scratched into the back, the sort of mark Mam used to draw on the steamed kitchen window to show us where the sun would be. Lorna Tait. That was her name before she married Dad. I sat there with my tea going cold and the rain drumming on the glass, and I couldn't make myself write a price.

So I've written the ticket in my own name and put the lot in the back room, dry as a bone. Come home for the christening in June and you can tell me I've been daft. I'll pour you a cup and we'll decide together what to do with it.