World map, compass and aeroplane forearm tattoo

The atlas came from the schoolroom at Greystane, its spine taped twice, its Africa gone the colour of weak tea from a decade of thumbs. Old Mr Ambrose drew the compass rose on the endpaper with a steel nib, eight points, each one a road he said you would never be let walk. You walk them anyway, in your head, during the ten minutes at the surface gate when the wind comes off the spoil heap and the whole valley smells of struck matches.

Your brother Tom went to Winnipeg in the spring on a ticket bought with three years of Friday wages. He sent one letter, folded into a paper aeroplane that a postman had clearly sat on, and it said only that the sky out there was too big to look at for long. You have pencilled a small cross where he wrote from, beside the line that leads out of the dark.

On Thursday the foreman takes you aside and says the eastern face is wet and the company wants men for the Durham seams. You fold the atlas into your jacket. That night, at the kitchen table, you turn to the blank corner past Australia and start to draw. The line you make is not straight, and it does not need to be. Your mother watches the pencil move and says nothing, which is how you know she has already packed your boots.