Close-up of a small black fine line script tattoo reading c'est la vie on the back of a hand.

C'est la vie script on the back of a hand

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows the back of a hand with the words c'est la vie written in a thin, joined black script. The linework is clean and even, with the ink appearing solid rather than shaded. The skin is warm toned and the lettering runs diagonally across the back of the hand against a plain white towel and blue background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Matthias,

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The man at the Coquelles desk took your jar of quince paste off me this morning, held it up to the light like a jeweller, then handed it back and said c'est la vie before I could argue. I stood in the queue for another forty minutes thinking you would have laughed, the way you laughed at everything that refused to go the way the timetable promised.

Mum has moved the kettle to the windowsill since you left, so the steam hits the glass and runs down in the shape of a mountain. She says it is the only thing in the flat that still behaves. I have been practising your shrug in the mirror above the sink, the one where the shoulders lift and the palms turn out, but mine looks as if I am asking someone to hold my coat.

The thing I actually came to say is that the shop has sold the tin of sepia ink you ordered in 1987 to a man from Ashford who wanted it for a sign. I told him it was spoken for. He asked by whom. I said by a man who believed in shrugging his way through customs. He bought a postcard instead and left the ink on the counter, so I have it now, under the till, wrapped in last year's Radio Times.

Come home at Easter, or send me a photograph of somewhere the bread is better than ours. I will prop it beside the kettle and tell it to behave.

Love, Odile

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