Close photograph of a woman's torso in black lace lingerie showing a black and grey realism rose and vertical script tattoo on the side of the ribs.

Black and grey rose and script on a torso

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A woman lies on a bed with one hand resting on her stomach, wearing black lace lingerie. A shaded black and grey rose sits on the side of the ribcage, with a partial floral tattoo above it near the bra line and vertical script lettering running down the side, only partly visible. The soft, warm lighting and tight framing keep the focus on the skin and the tattoos.

Realism Lettering Ribs Rose Script Floral Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Winter Garden's cloakroom smelled of wet wool and Brylcreem, and I had been hanging coats there since the spring the ballroom reopened. Most Saturdays the girls came in with their dancing shoes in paper bags and left with their stockings laddered. Ruth Farrow came in one October night with her hat pinned too low and asked me to keep an envelope in her coat until she came back for it.

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She said the letter was for Tommy Quine, who played trumpet with the Lancashire Dance Orchestra and had not written to her since August. Inside the envelope was a card with a black rose pressed flat, its petals gone the colour of stewed tea, and beneath it three words she had written and crossed out. I could make out the ghost of them through the paper: come back home. Under those, in a lighter hand, a single initial I could not place.

Tommy came for his coat at half past eleven, the band's last waltz still thumping through the floorboards. I handed him the envelope without a word. He turned the card over, saw the rose, and sat down on the bench with his trumpet case across his knees. He did not open it. He asked whether Ruth had said anything, and I told him she had only asked me to keep it dry.

Ruth never collected her coat. The next Saturday the band played a slow number nobody had requested, and the lights went low enough that I could barely see the floor from the hatch. Tommy was standing by the doors with the envelope tucked inside his jacket, his hand flat over it, as if he were keeping a pulse from getting away.