World map with watercolour splashes on ribs

The officer at Calais took the atlas off the passenger seat and held it up to the window the way you'd check a banknote. He wanted to know why a grown woman was carrying a map of the world with the paint still tacky on the Pacific. I said our father had done the splashes himself, the night before he went into hospital, because he claimed the sea never stayed inside its lines. He didn't smile, but he stamped the page and waved us on.

We have been driving since Dover with the window cracked, and I keep thinking about the kitchen table in Bristol, the jam jar of water going cloudy, his thumb smudging teal into the Indian Ocean. He drew the coastlines first in thin black ink, the way he drew everything, then let the colours bleed out past them. Red for Africa, he said, because it was the warmest thing he could think of. Pink for the Americas. Teal wherever he couldn't decide.

Last night in a lay-by near Reims I unfolded the map on the bonnet and found a fleck of orange on Greenland that I don't remember him adding. I have decided it was the day he taught you to hold the brush. Our route is still rough, but the splatters go wherever the road goes.

Keep the brushes, Ruth. Wash one out in a tin mug each time you cross a line, and let the colour run.

Love, Maddy