Dot and line finger tattoos on a hand

Mum has finally let me take the back bedroom's key off the nail, so the ledger is mine now, and I've worked out the thing you never could. The dots are the boarders' nights, one for every night paid up in full, and the bar is the week the damp came through the ceiling of number four. The chevron is the tide. Pointing down means the boats are going out, and I mark it on the inside of my wrist with Dad's old pen so I don't forget between breakfast and the last post.

Mr Ashdown in number six paid in coins again on Tuesday, counted out on the washstand as if the sea might take them back. He asked whether the chevron was for the ferry. I said it was for the weather, which is nearly true. He looked at the bar for a long while and said his wife used to draw one like that on the back of every shopping list, a line for the stop she couldn't name. I didn't ask which stop.

Last Saturday the bell in the hall rang at four in the morning and it was only the wind worrying the latch. I sat up with the tally and counted what we had: eleven dots for the nights, one bar for the leak, and under the chevron, in pencil, a mark I didn't remember making. Two dots and a dash. Your initials, I'm nearly sure, though you have never once written me a letter that short.

Come home at Easter. The sheets are white again, the boat from Harwich comes in on the Thursday, and I will show you what the dots add up to.