Two matching black script tattoos on the inner wrists, reading half again and half hope, shown side by side.

Matching script words on two wrists

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

The photo shows two wrists placed side by side, each with a single line of thin black script lettering. The left wrist reads half again and the right reads half hope, with the words written in a flowing handwritten style. The ink is solid black with no shading or colour, and the soft, warm-toned lighting sits against a plain skin background.

Lettering Other Script Word Wrist Matching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The tin came back on Tuesday with the lid still rattling, and inside it your half of the shilling, folded in the sheet of Mother's notepaper you always said was too good to waste. I have put it in the drawer with the bent spoons. You will say I am being sentimental. I am being sensible. A shilling split in two is worth nothing to anyone but the two of us, and that is the arithmetic I intend to keep.

The mail cart still runs out to the Hollins crossing every morning, and Mr Abel still swears at the mare when she balks at the ford. Nothing has changed except the light, which goes early now and makes the reed beds look like they are holding their breath. I walk the lane alone, counting the gateposts the way we used to, and when I reach the twelfth I find I have nobody to say "twelve" to.

Half again, you wrote on the back of the last card, and I laughed out loud in the post office, because that was always your joke: that we would be half again as clever and half again as brave once we stopped squabbling over the last pear. I have started to think you meant it as a promise rather than a sum.

So I bought a sheet of the good paper from Mrs Pargeter and copied your hand as well as I could, the loops leaning the way yours always did. Half hope, I have written at the bottom, and I have folded it small enough to fit in the tin. Post it back by Friday. The mare will pull the cart whether we are speaking or not, but I would rather she carried something worth the trouble.