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After school mother had strawberries for us on the balcony and cream in a china jug.
When I smelt the fruit in my spoon — I wanted no cream — and saw her against a blue sky (she wore a white dress and no makeup), I didn't want to grow up.
But I did, and worked in a bookshop with a girl who was subtle and knowing, and talked about dreams of strawberries on the analyst's couch.
My mother had a couch on which patients would lie, remembering strawberries with star-shaped green collars, pips on their skins and tender insides.
It was an expensive couch with a blue cover and studs; every patient had a clean case for the pillow. She sometimes rested there herself.
For days I couldn't find the watch you gave me, small certainty on my left wrist. I looked in the usual places, fingered the empty box and read the guarantee for consolation.
Searching, I came upon a pocket watch of solid gold, a hand-down from an ancestor kept in a cotton sock. An eighth or a sixteenth of me, he wore it ticking near his heart.
The winding button turned and made a grating noise, the ornate arrows didn't budge. I slipped it back into the darkness of the drawer, where it will say forever four to six.
'You've your watch?' you ask when I steal a glance at yours. 'Of course!' I am resolved to buy a replica, 'just giving it a rest.'
Changing the sheets, I find it lying in a fold face upwards, shining, strap curved to the shape of my wrist.
After the service we drove to the coast, empty except for birds and trees turning red. You wanted to go back to the ocean where we all come from.
Anna, your eldest, carried the cardboard box, she tipped and shook it and in the end held it upside down. Always quick to swim out to sea, you lay in shallow water
like a mass of grey oats. I wanted to know where your lashes were, the long lashes I used to envy... We covered you with lobelia from the rockwall you built
and pink gladioli with purple throats; you would have thought the satin bows a waste of money. I bent down to touch you and felt grit like crushed shells. We could have taken a handful each
according to how much we loved you or according to your will, but stood without speaking in the fading light. Anna's small twins were shuffling sand into the empty box.
We left in the darkness by a full moon. I wondered if the tide would sweep you out or you'd stay on the beach for strangers to tread on, and when I'd see you again.
It is not the custom in this country to ask for doggy bags at parties. But you can help take dishes out and sneak goodies into bag or inner pocket.
Virginia Woolf is not a penname, the writer married a Woolf. I'm afraid a pseudonym is unlikely to stop boy friend or sister seeing themselves in your novel.
What a shame Prince Albert melted on the Christmas Tree and great grandma cried! Model him in marzipan next time, it will not harm her gums.
Well done! You have completed a Dutch landscape puzzle the Queen found difficult. Why not write to a lady-in-waiting and offer to assist her Majesty to fit the missing bits?
He says you have nothing in common, keeps to his side of the bed, never wears his knitted slippers.
A white mouse hanging from a pierced ear by a silver thread can be wonderfully diverting. But take the rodent off at bedtime and hang a picture of your neck in the mouse house, to make it feel secure.
You may write to me whenever you like.
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