Black script tattoo on the side of the ribs reading I'm the hero of the story, I don't need to be saved.

Script quote on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close side view of a two-line script tattoo on the ribcage, reading "I'm the hero of the story / I don't need to be saved". The fine, flowing lettering is set in dark ink and sits just below a dark blue top and white lace bra. Partly visible in the frame are dark trousers, a holster with a dark object in it, and a round metal badge at the hip.

Lettering Fine line Ribs Quote Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tobias, the wind has been at the lighthouse for three days now and the lamp room smells of paraffin and wet wool. I am writing because your mother will only tell you the sanitised version, and you were always the one who wanted the whole thing. So here it is. The Skerrow relief boat came out on the Tuesday, and Nell Garrow, who is nineteen and thinks she invented courage, was on the rock below the west stair with the dinghy holed and her ankle bent the wrong way. The coxswain shouted through the spray that they had a line for her. She shouted back that she had a tide table, a pencil and a sense of direction, and that they should go home to their teas.

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What she had written on the back of that tide table, which I read later when the boat brought it up, was two lines in her careful schoolroom hand: I'm the hero of the story. I don't need to be saved. She had underlined the second one twice. Nobody on the boat thought it was funny, least of all Nell, who had been told by every man on that island that she was too young and too soft for the rope work. So she did the sums herself. She crawled to the gully, waited for the sea to drop, and hauled the spare lamp cable up the stair one hand at a time.

When the men finally reached the top, she was sitting on the gallery with the lamp lit behind her, pretending the blood on her shin was tar. The coxswain asked if she needed anything. She said a cup of tea, and that he could tell her mother she was late for supper. I have kept the tide table in the kitchen drawer with the string and the spare keys. Come at Easter. The light is much brighter now.

Love, Gran