Quote tattoo across upper back

Tom is already on the wall with his arms out like a tightrope walker, and the ditch below is full of nettles and rusted bicycle wheels. Ruth sits on the gate with her knees pulled up, peeling a plum in one long curl the way she does when she is deciding whether something is worth the trouble. She says you'll break your neck. You say probably, and jump.

You don't break anything. Tom does, a fortnight later, his wrist on the edge of the ditch, and for the rest of the summer he wears a plaster cast covered in biro names. Ruth signs it in neat capitals and writes underneath the line Grandad chalked on the cider press for as long as anyone can remember, the words he used whenever he was done talking about sensible things: The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. Tom says she copied it wrong. She didn't.

Late in September the three of you go back up the ladder together. Ruth goes first, slowly, one rung at a time, and at the top she reaches for the windfall you were after and presses it into your hand. It is still warm from the sun. Below, the press stands with its chalk fading in the rain, and you realise she has been climbing all along.