Yesterday evening, I found a wooden chest in the attic, about the size of a shoe box and engraved with flowers. I opened the latch and guessed from the creak when I lifted the lid that nobody had opened it in a long while. Inside, wrapped in a scrap of yellowing cotton, was a small leather-bound book. It looked similar to a Bible, but when I opened it there were pages and pages of italic handwriting scrawled across every inch of paper. I flicked back to the front and read the words on the inside cover: ‘Harriet May Jones, aged 16, 1832’.

Her name sounded familiar and it was with a jolt that I remembered where I had seen it. It was when I’d been looking round the graveyard last week, reading epitaphs to pass the time. The headstone had drawn my attention - not from its splendour; there were no marble angels or lavish bouquets adorning this grave - but from its plain simplicity. It was just a stone, a little mossy and eroded, engraved with only the words, ‘HERE LIES HARRIET CATHERINE JONES, 1816 - 1895. MAY SHE REST IN PEACE’.

I turned the page - carefully, as it was more fragile than a leaf skeleton - and began to read.

This morning, I drink a coffee to wake myself, having been up until the early hours reading Harriet’s diary. It was one o’clock in the morning when I finished it and went to bed, and even then I lay awake for a while, thinking. When I’ve finished, I pick a few flowers from the garden of my new house. There are plenty, as the woman who lived here before was a gardener. I add more to my posy from the wildflowers that grow along the river bank where I walk till I reach the village. At the graveyard, I leave the flowers in front of Harriet’s headstone.