Close-up of a small black Roman numeral tattoo reading I, XXIII, XCII in a lettering style on a forearm.

Small Roman numeral lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up of a woman's forearm, with her head and face cropped out of frame, showing a small black tattoo of Roman numerals reading I · XXIII · XCII. The serif lettering is crisp and evenly spaced, with solid black ink and no shading. The warm, indoor lighting and shallow focus keep the forearm as the clear subject against a dark top and a blurred background.

Lettering Forearm Roman numeral Numeral Text Serif lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The top road shut on Tuesday and the snow has not let up since, so the inn is full of people who were only meant to stay one night. Mr Haworth from the Burnley coach has asked me three times whether the telephone is working. It is not. I give him the same answer each time, which he seems to find restful, and he has taken to sitting by the boiler with his wet dog and a briefcase full of invoices.

Last night I found your scrap of paper in the back office drawer, folded under the old register. Your handwriting, still making the capitals look like church spires. One line only: I / XXIII / XCII. You never told me what it meant, and I have spent the morning turning it over with the bread knife in my hand. Page one, line twenty-three, word ninety-two of Gran's almanac? I checked. That page has forty words and a stain shaped like Ireland.

Mrs Dunn in room four, who has done the crossword in pen since before decimal money, read it over my shoulder at breakfast and said it was a cricket score. One wicket, twenty-three runs, ninety-two not out, the way the Courier printed Eric's matches. We laughed until she needed her inhaler. Then Mr Haworth stopped laughing and said he had once been ninety-two not out himself, on the morning he left home, and went very quiet by the boiler.

I went out after with the shovel and counted my steps to the gate, the way we used to on the walk to school. Twenty-three to the gatepost. Then the lane, which the council will not reach until April, and somewhere beyond that, when the snow lets go, the road to you. I did not count that far. I stood at the gate until the flakes on my sleeve were no different from the rest of the white.

Come home when they open the pass. Bring the almanac.

Love, Bea