Dalek silhouette tattoo

You will never guess who turned up at the Majestic on Saturday, looking like he meant business. Dennis Hollis, the lad from the bakery who used to walk you home and talk about nothing but bus timetables. He had a Dalek drawn on him in solid black, dome and eyestalk and that stubby plunger sticking out like it was about to take someone's drink off them. Mum would have fainted. I laughed so hard I got the hiccups, and he took it personally.

The band played Glenn Miller for the old folk and something loud for the rest of us, and Dennis danced like nobody had ever told him how. Stiff at the elbows, one arm jerking out straight on every beat, and every time that plunger swung round I thought of the thing rolling across the car park shouting its one word. I told him he moved like a clockwork tin. He said that was the point. A Dalek doesn't need to be graceful, he said, only certain.

Just before midnight the lights went up and he asked me to step outside. I thought he was going to propose or be sick. Instead he tugged the lamp round so I could see the white panels, the dots down the skirt, every one a little hole where the ink had been left to breathe. Thirty-one dots, he said. One for each week he'd been saving for it. Then he asked which of the two of us should get the next one.

I said yes before he'd finished asking, and he went back in to dance, one stiff arm out in front of him, steering me through the door as if the plunger was the only thing in the room that knew the way.