Fine line black script tattoo reading c'est la vie runs vertically along the side of a hand, near long reddish hair.

C'est la vie script on the hand

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a hand resting against long reddish hair, with the words c'est la vie written in delicate cursive script along the side of the hand. The linework is thin and even, in black and grey ink, with the lettering running vertically from the knuckle towards the wrist. The soft, neutral background keeps the focus on the tattoo.

Fine line Lettering Hand Script Handwriting Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The function room at the Crown in Halifax smelled of carpet shampoo and spilt lager, and Dawn Kettering had been standing by the raffle table for twenty minutes, trying to decide whether Keith Pollard was looking at her or at the bottle of Blue Nun on the prize table. Thirty years since Form 4B. Mrs Abbott's French lessons were the only ones anyone remembered, mostly because she made them chant verbs like a hymn and rapped the desk with a ruler whenever the subjunctive went wrong.

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Keith came over with two plastic cups and asked whether she still wrote to that girl in Lyon. Dawn had, for a year, after a pen pal scheme in the lower sixth. Odile Marchal sent a card every Christmas, always signed with the same line in looping blue ink. Dawn had kept them in a biscuit tin until the year the cards stopped. "She used to finish every letter the same way," Dawn said. "C'est la vie. I thought it was the saddest thing I'd ever read."

Keith laughed and said that was about the most French thing anyone from 4B had managed. Then he told her Mrs Abbott had died in March, and her husband had sent round the old register with a note asking whoever was left to sign it. Dawn fetched it from the bag by the door, found the page, and saw her own name beside Odile's, both of them stopped mid-year in 1994 as if someone had lifted the pen.

She wrote something under the column, then looked at it for a long time. Keith read it upside down and grinned. Dawn closed the register, collected her coat, and left the raffle unclaimed on the table. Outside, the car park was shining with rain, and the cup of Blue Nun sat on the windowsill, untouched, gathering its own small reflection.