Love you forever script on forearm

I have started this four times, on the back of the gas bill because the good paper lives in the drawer you never open. Outside, the number 38 is sighing at the stop under the railway arches, and the streetlamps have turned the whole of Leeds the colour of weak tea. It is twenty past two. Nobody in Hyde Park is awake except the foxes and whoever is still arguing on the top deck.

Nan's cards always came with the same three words in that looping hand, sloping down the envelope as if they were late for a train. Love you forever. She wrote it on birthdays, on the back of a bus ticket once, and on the inside lid of the biscuit tin, which I still can't open without feeling caught. I used to think it was just a thing people wrote. Now I think it was a promise she had to keep making, because she knew nobody believes a promise until it has been written down twice.

I'm not going to pretend I know what forever means. I know your kettle sticks on the third click and that you hum when you think no one is listening. I know the flat will smell of Dettol for a week after I've gone, because you will scrub the skirting boards out of spite. That is about as far as I can see tonight.

The cab's indicator is ticking at the kerb. I've left the spare key under the chipped ceramic frog, the way Nan used to. When you find this, read the last line twice, with your finger under the words, the way she taught us.

Love you forever, C