Two script quote tattoos on the side and neck

I'm writing this at the kitchen table with the wireless turned low, because Dad has started again about the Hallorans' boy and I can't stand to hear his name said in that voice. You'll remember Teddy Halloran from the Saturday dances, the one who could bring a whole room to its feet. Well, he came back from Korea with a medal in a tin and a limp he will not talk about, and the town has decided he is a hero. Mrs Pickering had the Legion hang his photograph outside the post office.

Last Tuesday I saw him on the bridge at dusk, throwing stones at the water the way boys do when they have forgotten how to be boys. I asked what he was doing. He said he was waiting to see which of the men who cheered him at the station would still be cheering when the bills came in. He laughed then, but it was not the laugh I knew.

I have been thinking about what Granddad used to say, that you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. He said it about the mill owner, who once gave the whole parish a Christmas goose and later turned out the families in the strike. Granddad was not a man for sayings, so I took it as a warning, and I wonder now if Teddy has been reading it the same way.

I am going to walk down to the bridge on Sunday with two cups of tea from the flask. If he throws stones at me I'll know he is still in there somewhere.

Your loving sister, Margaret