Matching I love you and I love you more wrist script

The officer at Dover had a biro tucked behind each ear and asked me three times what my reason for travelling was. I told him the truth, which was a man in Ostend who cannot tell a joke to save his life. He did not smile. He stamped the page and waved me into the lane marked nothing to declare, and I sat in the services car park afterwards with the engine off, looking at my wrist as if it might have changed.

You will remember the afternoon we had them done. Mr Okafor's shop above the launderette, the buzz of the machine like a wasp in a jam jar, and you insisting on writing the words out by hand first because you said a stranger's handwriting was no way to say something true. Your lines came out leaning, the y in you sliding downhill. Mine was neater, and you said that proved I had never meant it as much as you had. We argued over who would get the longer line, and you won, because you always do.

The ferry smells of diesel and chips, and the sea outside is the colour of wet slate. A woman beside me is teaching her small son to count the gulls. I keep thinking of the drawer in your kitchen where you keep the spare batteries and the rubber bands, and how I used to find a note in there every few weeks, always the same two words, always with the same wobble on the final e.

I will be on the 6:40 train from Gare du Nord on Thursday. Do not bring flowers. Bring the kettle, the one with the broken lid, and stand at the platform where I can see you before you can see me. I will hold my wrist up so you can read it from across the concourse, and you will know that the difference between us is still only one word.