Typewriter-style quote on a forearm

You will not believe the Saturday we've had at the Marine Pavilion. The bulbs over the floor blew one after another, so Mr Harker had to stand on a chair with a torch in his teeth, and the band played half of "Stardust" in the wrong key before Teddy Sayle stopped them with one bang of his palm on the piano lid. He never bangs anything. He is the gentlest man in Kent, and he types his set lists on that black Remington in the cloakroom because his fingers keep forgetting the shape of his handwriting.

Afterwards I found a strip of paper rolled up in the piano's music slot, a carbon copy with the letters struck hard and a bit crooked. It said, Our brains are sick / But that's okay. Nothing else, no name, just the two lines. I asked him what it meant and he only laughed and said it was the only true sentence he'd typed all year, that it cured nothing, but it was a start.

Then he asked me to dance, which he has never done in four seasons. We went round the floor slow, his left hand missing the beat every few bars, and the whole room went quiet and kind about it, nobody staring, the way you'd let a tune drift. I counted for him under my breath. Mr Harker turned the lights back up at ten, and the two of us stayed out on the boards until the cleaner came in with her mop.

I keep the carbon strip in my handbag now. Write back soon and tell me the sea is still grey, and that you're eating properly.

Love, Ivy