I looked around the kitchen, but there was nothing to write on or with.

“There’s a notebook and pencils in the top drawer beside your bed,” Lizzie said, picking up the pot and rotating it to warm the sides. “You fetch them first.”

Lizzie was sitting at the table when I came back down; our cups were steaming, and there were a plate of biscuits and a pair of scissors beside the pot. “To cut the page down to size,” Lizzie said.

When I was ready, she began. I was reminded of old Mabel, and the reverence she gave to this process. What was it that made them sit up straighter and check their thoughts before they spoke? Why did they care so much?

“Bostin,” Lizzie said, pronouncing the n with care. “It means lovely.” She blushed.

“Can you put it in a sentence?”

“I can, but you must write Natasha’s name below it.”

“Of course.”

“Lizzie Lester, my bostin mairt.”

I wrote out the slip, then cut another.

“And mairt? What does that mean?”

“Friend,” said Lizzie. “Natasha is my friend, my mairt.”

I guessed at the spelling, and looked forward to adding these new words to my trunk. It had been a while since I had thought about it.

Tomorrow we would be gone from Cobblers Dingle. I was going to miss the waves of green hills. I would miss the silence. When we first came, I found it too quiet, my thoughts too loud. But the silence had turned out not to be complete: the valley hummed and sang and bleated. When my thoughts had been heard and argued with, and when some kind of peace had been struck, I’d begun to listen to the valley like some would listen to music or a holy chant. There was solace in its rhythm, and it slowed the beat of my heart.

I seemed better, according to Ditte. Her letters had been regular, even if mine, in the beginning, had not. I had recently regained the habit of writing to her, and apparently this was one sign of my improving health. Another, Ditte wrote, was an unexpected letter from Lizzie.

Mrs. Lloyd penned it. How brave of Lizzie to ask. She wrote that “Everything is high or deep or endless—there’s no shortage of places to do yourself in, yet Essy comes home every time with no sign of trying.” If only everyone was as straight-speaking as her.

Was I better? Before Shropshire I’d felt broken, as though I would fall should the scaffold of my work be removed. I didn’t feel that now, but there was a fine crack through the middle of me, and I suspected it might never mend. I remembered Lizzie apologising to Mrs. Lloyd the first time she stayed to chat, for the chip in the cup.

“A chip doesn’t stop it from holding tea,” Mrs. Lloyd had said.