Woman in headdress profile on the ribs

The head came up out of the bed beside the potting shed in March, when the frost had lifted and the clay turned to porridge under the spade. Mr Okafor from the big house wanted the border dug for the new espaliered pears, and I was the one who found her, face down, a grey brow streaked with worm casts. Nothing else of her was left, only a profile: a straight nose, a heavy lidded eye, and a headdress folded back in pleats that ran down behind the ear like the stripes on a tabby cat.

We cleaned her with a soft brush and a bucket of rainwater, and the lichen came away in grey ribbons until the carving showed clean and sharp against the flint. Mrs Pryce, who has opinions about everything under the glass, says she is Egyptian and came over in a crate of ornaments in the old Lord's time. I told her the Egyptians did not keep their queens in Surrey, but she only sniffed and said the mail boat carried stranger things than that.

Mr Okafor would not have her in the house, so I set her in the pergola at the end of the walk, facing east, where the first sun comes over the orchard wall. The pear blossom is out now, and every morning the petals drift down and settle in the folds of her headdress as if someone had been careful to place them there. By four o'clock the trellis shadow lies across her brow like a sash.

I have not decided whether facing the sun is a kindness or a rudeness to the pears. Either way, she has stopped looking at the mud, and I find I prefer her company to the spade.

Your loving sister, Flo