Script quote tattoo on the thigh

The boat didn't come on Tuesday, so the post has been sitting in Mrs Gillies's back room with the seed catalogues and the lamp oil. I've read your last letter four times now. You say the mainland is all glass and traffic and nobody there knows your name, and I should be glad of it. I am glad of it, mostly.

Your father came up the hill yesterday to ask whether I'd heard from you. He stood at the gate with his cap in both hands, like a man waiting to be sent for. I told him what I tell everyone: you're fine, you're working, you'll write when there's something to say. He didn't believe me and I didn't blame him. He sat on the wall and talked about the winter the boat went under off Ardmore, how he went out in the dark anyway, and how you were the one who held the lantern on the slipway while he did it. I hadn't known that. Nobody tells the good parts of a man's worst nights.

So here is one, since you're owed it. When you came home that February, shaking and smelling of drink, I didn't ask you to be better. I sat on the end of the bed until you slept. That was all I had. It was enough for a while, and then it wasn't, and you went, and I let you.

The minister read us a line from Romans at the funeral, the one about love showing itself while we're still a mess, not after we've tidied ourselves up. I used to think it was only a sermon. Now I think it's just an accounting of who stayed.

Come home when you can. The lamp in the window is still lit. Mind the stairs.

Morag