Compass and clock pair on forearms

Nell went south to sea, a deckhand and then a mate, writing letters that smelled of tar and oranges. Margit stayed behind to keep the shop and wind the church clock on Sundays, because the old man's knees had gone. Every letter Nell sent ended with the same line about the years being a kind of sea, and Margit would read it aloud to the kettle while the gulls argued on the roof.

The letters stopped one February. Margit wound her watch every night at eleven all the same, and when the clocks went forward in spring she left it alone, nine years running, because she said her sister would find her way home by the needle and the hour would be waiting. Then one March there came a knock at the shop door at half past four in the morning. A woman stood there with a grey plait and a compass held flat on her palm, the needle still swinging, though she'd been walking since the train.

Margit looked down at her own watch. It said twenty to five, and it had been right all along, only the town had moved on without it. That's the story. Don't look at me like that, I'm not crying, it's the onions in the stew. Now go and check bed four before he wakes and starts wandering down the corridor looking for his own compass.