A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The note is still tucked under the teapot when the boat comes in, and you unfold it on the slipway with the wind from the harbour tugging at the corners. Your brother's handwriting leans forward across the paper, all looped capitals and tails that never quite stop, the way he wrote when he was nine and had something urgent to tell you about the cat.
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Skerrow has forty-one people on it in winter, and most of them are watching you now, the way islanders watch anyone who steps off the ferry with a suitcase instead of a crate of hens. You tell yourself you came to sort the cottage. Mrs Ferrier at the shop has already put the kettle on for you, and the ferry bell rings twice across the water before it leaves without you.
The last line of his note sits alone at the bottom, pressed so hard the nib has caught the paper: Don't forget to love yourself. You remember him saying it at the kitchen table, flicking flour at you as if it were the most ordinary instruction in the world. You laughed then. You had no idea a single sentence could end up being the last thing of someone you had.
You fold the note into your coat pocket and walk down past the nets to the end of the harbour wall. The tide is turning, pulling the kelp out in long green ribbons. By the time the boat is a grey smudge on the Atlantic, you have already started up the hill, the paper warm against your ribs, and for the first time since the funeral you stop at the top to look back at the sea.
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