Heart-shaped script quote on upper back

Someone has written on it in a looping hand that curls round in a ring, as if the words were trying to hold each other. The world will know peace, it says, once love outlasts the fear of power. The blue ink of the word peace has run a little where a thumb has pressed it, and the red of love is nearly gone. Somebody drew the heart around it first, then filled the words in one by one, the way you might sign a letter you were never going to post.

You ask Maureen, who has run the breakfast shift since before this boat had a name, where it came from. She says a lad from the Rotterdam crossing wrote it while he waited for his tea, talking the whole time about his nan, and then went ashore at Hook with a single holdall and never came back for it. She nods at the bag under the counter, still zipped, its strap gone grey with salt.

You pin the napkin above the fryer where the steam can reach it. By the time the Hull lights show through the porthole, the rolls are golden and the pencil is back behind your ear. You read the heart once more from the top, the way it was meant to be read, and the lamp goes on swinging over the pastry as if it has all the time in the world.