Kiss-mark lips tattoo with skull and crossbones

The letter came up with the Thursday mail, folded small and sealed with a blot of wax. Jem's hand had never been neat, but this was a kiss, pressed so hard onto the paper that the colour had bled into the fibres. Nell held it to the lamp. Where the mouth should have been open, the paper glowed through in two pale shapes: a skull with its eye sockets punched clean, and a pair of bones crossed beneath it.

She knew the code without being told. Jem's uncle had run brandy out of that cove for thirty years, and every ship's boy learned the signs before he learned his letters. A skull under a kiss meant the revenue men were on the headland. Keep off the quay. Keep off the water altogether.

Nell went down to the quay anyway, lace shawl pinned over her hair, and stood where the lamps didn't reach. At midnight the Mary Ellen slid past the breakwater with no lights showing, and the man who stepped ashore was not Jem but the preacher's son, waving a clean white handkerchief like a man surrendering. She pressed her own mouth to the corner of the letter, leaving a print that would stand out on any cloth, and tucked it under a stone for whoever came looking next.