Word pairs tattooed on a forearm

They have moved me to the night desk at Ashby Crossing, so I now type the manifests alone with the lamp buzzing and the lorries idling outside like tired cattle. The Olivetti has a sticky e that I have stopped fighting. Last Tuesday a driver stood at my hatch for twenty minutes insisting that a crate of tinned peaches had been on his sheet, and while he argued I typed the heading for the page, the way Mr Dunmore taught us at the training school: two words, one above the other, with a rule drawn beneath the first one. Heart over mind. He never explained why. He said the first word was the one you leaned on.

Every night since, I have typed two headings at the top of each sheet. Heart over mind for the cases where the rules say one thing and the person in front of me says another. Courage over fear for the ones I cannot make myself refuse. I have started to think of the forms as a kind of argument, with the underlines doing the arguing.

Last night a woman came through with a child asleep across her knees. Her papers were in order except for a date that had been written by hand and then corrected in a slightly different ink. She did not sit down. She did not look at me once. I could have sent her back to the waiting room for a week. Instead I typed courage above fear, drew the line under courage, and reached for the rubber stamp. The ink bled a little into the margin, which Mr Dunmore would have called sloppy.

I am writing to tell you I have stopped minding the sticky e. You were right that nobody remembers the form, only the hand that signed it. The underline is still there under courage, and I have decided that is where it belongs.

Your loving sister, Margaret