Yantra mandala tattoo across upper back

Mr Hollis finally let me hold the good brushes this week, the sable ones he keeps wrapped in chamois in the drawer under the till. I spent Tuesday copying a ring for the Co-op window, eight petals inside a circle, and he stood behind me the whole time with his pipe going out, saying my lines were too fat. He is right. Nothing I draw holds still the way his does. You have to keep your breath out of it, he says, or the ink picks up your nerves.

Last night I went back to the bookshop on Harbour Lane because the woman who runs it wanted a drawing of the old diagram from her father's books, a map of petals with writing packed into every one, little loops and hooks like fishing line. She said it was meant to keep a traveller safe on the road. I copied it three times before I got it right, and then she made me copy it a fourth time for herself, which I didn't mind.

Here is the part I keep turning over. She asked me to write the English words along the edge, the ones her father had pencilled in the margin: "to travel" and "understand". I wrote them small, the way you'd write on the back of a photograph. She laughed and said that was exactly what he would have done.

Write back soon and tell me whether the ships in Rotterdam have sails yet or only engines. I want to know what the sea sounds like now.

Love, Mae