October 1974

Dearest lambsie, I’ve just had a visitor. It was you, my Laura-lamb! You turned up on your way to the university with a shepherd’s pie from your mother and a message she will be by tonight. A bag of shopping, too. I canna mind asking her to go to the shop for me but she’s bought things I have run out of, so I must have. Aye, I think I did, I remember now.

I wonder whether you will remember when you read this. Maybe not. You were in a great hurry to be away. You sat there with the cup of tea I fancy your mother told you to stay for. Your fingers drumming on the table. How beautiful you looked in that long purple dress with the little mirror things sewn on the hems of your sleeves. Bless you, lambsie, never were you good at pretending to be happy about a thing when you weren’t.

I opened a packet of Shortbread Creams and arranged some on a saucer. Not a patch on the ones we used to make at the factory …

You rolled your pretty eyes. Do I always say that?

It was after you left that I got my book out again—the first time for a couple of weeks. I have been too sick to write, lambsie. And tired. I don’t know how much more I can give you.

I looked at my list again, the list at the front, and scratched a few things out. Not in that way of something done but to be—what’s the word? Ruthless. Aye. Now it’s just the things I have to write, while I still have the words.

But the next thing on the list … well. I keep putting down the pen, putting it off.

Forgive me if I’m brief, if I leave out the details. You are a smart girl, lambsie, you can fill them in for yourself.