Beauty and Beast wrist tattoos

The gilder came on Tuesday and asked why the window of the Marlow Street hat shop still says BEAUTY in my hand while the sign above the door is all your hard angles. I told him it was a matter of sign-writing etiquette, which is what you'd call it, and he laughed the way men laugh when they haven't been given a proper answer. I haven't told anyone that I went back on Sunday night with a rag and a tin of size and nearly lifted the B off the glass. My hand wouldn't do it.

You were always the showy one with the brush. Remember the bakery job, when Mr Okafor wanted his name across the front and you sat up three nights making the serifs look like they'd been cut by a man with a grudge? Everyone said the letters looked hard and cold, and you said that was the point, that a beast needs something that stops people walking past. I said beauty needs something that makes them stop. We argued about it over cold tea until the lamp guttered, and neither of us ever gave ground.

Now the shop is quiet. Mrs Feld has asked whether I'd take the lettering for the new hospital chapel, and I said I'd think about it, which is not a no. Some evenings I stand under the sign with the lamp behind me and look at the two words together, your heavy capitals and my soft loops, and I can't decide which one the street is reading.

I'm sending a sketch of the chapel lettering. Tell me honestly if the S is too tall.

Nell