Black fine line script tattoo reading c'est la vie across the back of a hand, shown in a close photograph.

Script phrase c'est la vie on a hand

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a hand with the words c'est la vie written in black cursive script across the back of the hand, near the wrist. The lettering has smooth, even linework with uniform thickness and a slight slant. The background is a plain white towel with a blue-grey surface behind, and a gold ring is visible on a finger.

Lettering Fine line Hand Script Phrase Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The marquee went over at twenty past four, eleven minutes before the speeches, and you stood at the edge of the lawn with a tray of sausage rolls while the poles leaned like drunk stilts. A man from the hire company was shouting about guy ropes. Your clipboard had gone to pulp. Ruth, the bride's mother, came across the grass with one hand clamped on her hat and said, 'Tell me it can be fixed.' You told her it could not, not today, and then you heard yourself say the thing your grandmother used to say over burnt bread and missed trains: 'C'est la vie.'

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Ruth laughed, which you had not expected. She laughed until she had to sit on an upturned crate of prosecco. The band carried their amplifiers into the potting shed and started again among the wheelbarrows. Guests came in through the back door of the farmhouse, dripping, and were handed towels from the airing cupboard. By six there were thirty-one people in a kitchen built for eight, and the groom was teaching a retired postman to jive beside the Aga.

The speeches happened at the sink. The best man stood on a stool, the bride sat in borrowed wellies, and you were dragged in by the sleeve to say something about the food. You said the pastry was soggy, the wine was warm and nobody had died, and the room cheered as though you had made a proper toast. Then the bride's grandmother, who had said nothing all afternoon, raised a mug of tea and said, in careful French, 'Ça, c'est la vie,' and winked at you across the crowded room.

Near midnight the rain stopped. You went out to the lawn and found the marquee lying flat as a sail, and on it, barefoot on the wet canvas, the bride and groom were dancing to a single fiddle under a sky full of stars. You stood there with the empty tray and the ruined clipboard under one arm, and for once you did not reach for a plan.