Matching heart script tattoos on two forearms

The slate came up out of the bed this morning when I was lifting the potatoes, face down in the clay where the frost had heaved it. You'll remember Dad carving those words on it the summer you were born, the ones he copied off the back of a seed packet and then argued with the printer about. You are mine, it says, and under that the date in those little Roman letters he liked because they looked like fence posts. I scrubbed it at the outside tap for an hour and the lettering came up as sharp as the day he cut it.

Something's bothering me, though. I always assumed the date was the wedding, the one Mum swore she'd never forget. But I went through the box in the shed last night and found the programme from the church fête, and the numbers match the fête, not the wedding at all. The Saturday he first wheeled his barrow up our lane and asked whether the apple tree was ours or the Hallams'. Mum said it was the Hallams', and he said then he'd have to marry into the lane, and everyone laughed at him for a year.

So I've been sitting on the back step with the slate on my knee, trying to work out which of them was the joke. I don't think either of them was. I think he meant the date as a claim, the way you'd stake out a plot. I've left it on the windowsill to dry. Come up on Sunday and bring the second slate from the greenhouse, the one with the other half on it. I'd like to see whether his lettering agrees with itself.

Love, Nell