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The scars remain, Mallika, but we're over the screams from the past, helped enormously not only from a good therapist, but also by sleeping under a weighted blanket. Even hand-woven woollen blankets are lovely to sleep under. Natural fibers, too. This is why we even love wearing linen. It's so cool in summer, yet warm in winter from its strong flax fibers. Night terrors that used to rule our night times have gone, and even young Tommy sleeps well with her beloved teddy bears. She's happy now, and it shows. How fortunate we are to have found our long-lost little sister!

This excerpt from my Thoughts From Afar, 'A perfect pen falls in love with a single hand. Its love is lifelong and loyal. In the hands of another the pen will dry up; it will scratch out words and turn everything into an unintelligible, distraught mess.' rang true again when I found an expensive pen of my late mother's in Tommy's wastepaper bin.

I'd tried to write with it myself and Julie also: a beautiful hand crafted Graf von Faber-Castelll rollerball in lovely darkened pernambuco wood, but its rollerball scratched across the page just like as Tommy had described. Like us, she hated it and instead chose one that we all love, a cheap €2.50 Schneider Slider Rave ballpoint that used Viscoglide ink, a silky ink that made one's pen literally glide across the page. Now that's a pen! But there are other pens in our late mother's collection we have yet to try.

Maybe I can find a refill using Viscoglide ink and fit it back into that pernambuco pen? I just hate beautifully made things going to waste, and we all love a good pen!

And a notebook, though not a Moleskine anymore because its pages are too thin these days and cause fountain ink to seep. Instead I have a Rhodia notebook using Clairefontaine 100gsm ivory brushed vellum. I paid a lot for it. It's well worth it, good vellum, and I go out of my way to find notebooks of great quality writing paper because high quality vellum is pure pleasure. That means buying one for Tommy, but also for Julie. Maman on the other hand, uses an old fashioned Filofax!

But each to their own.

After some gentle chatting we discovered Tommy never loved our mother, or father. Anna had said something that had angered Tommy and got her hand bitten. HEH - serves our mother bl$$dy well right for being such a nasty git. A narcissistic git, too. But how we love our Tommy. True to character, she lives up to her nickname with panache: 'Sparky'. Like sister - like sister. She's going to do well in life with an attitude like that. And I'll encourage it, damn what other people think. No wilting flower is our Tommy. She won't take rubbish from people. Best to start young. Because if you really want to illuminate this world, you've got to burn!