Quote on forearm in typewriter font

I found your old typewriter in the loft when we cleared Dad's house, the black Olivetti with the sticky e, and I have been typing this letter on it at the kitchen table with the radio off so I can hear every strike. You will laugh, but it still works. The ribbon is bone dry, so the words come out grey at the edges, like they have been left in the rain.

You asked at the reunion whether I ever finished the novel about the lighthouse keeper. I did not. I got as far as the keeper's wife leaving on the Tuesday boat and then I stopped, and I told everyone at the Crown that I had run out of time, which was a lie. The truth is I kept rereading the first chapter and deciding it was rubbish. Every page I wrote was a failure, so I stopped writing pages.

Anyway, I went to the tattoo parlour on Mill Street on Saturday, the one with the blue neon sign that always has a moth in it. The artist was a patient young man with a Liverpool accent who asked me what I wanted, and I found I had already typed it out in my head. He traced the words in the same typeface as the machine on the sideboard, and when he was done I could not stop looking at my arm.

So here is what I wanted to tell you. The keeper's wife was not a failure for taking the boat. She was a woman who had been stood on a rock for nine years. I have finished the chapter now. I will post it to you when it is typed.

Love, Jean