Black and grey realism rose with cursive script lettering on the side of a torso, held beside a fan of banknotes.

Black and grey rose and script on ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop of a torso in a white crop top and jeans, with a shaded black and grey rose and cursive script lettering tattooed on the side of the ribs and abdomen. The rose has layered petals with soft grey shading and fine outlines, and the script is drawn in bold black strokes beneath it. A hand on the left holds a fan of US dollar bills against the skin, which fills the left side of the frame.

Realism Lettering Ribs Rose Script Lettering Banknote Dollar bill Hand Jeans

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dessie Coyle lost the Rennie money on a Tuesday, the same night the rain came sideways off the Mersey and rattled the windows of the Gilt Lamp. He sat with his back to the coat rail, counting what was left on the baize in twenties and fifties, rolling each note tight the way his mother taught him to fold a shirt. Three hundred and forty pounds. Enough to square Mrs Rennie if he got it to her before Friday.

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Across the table, Lorna Vance dealt without looking at her hands. A rose was inked along her side, grey petals layered like tissue paper, its stem looping down into a ribbon of script that nobody in the Lamp could read in the low light. She had a way of letting a silence sit until the other man filled it himself. Dessie filled it.

"I've got a grandfather's watch in the car," he said. "It runs. It's worth more than you think."

"Everything's worth more than I think, Dessie. That's why I'm still in business." She turned his last card over. A nine of clubs, dead as a slate. She reached for the pile, then stopped, and pushed two fifties back across the baize towards him. "Take these to Mrs Rennie. Tell her the rose paid for itself."

He didn't ask what she meant. Outside, the lamp above the door flickered, and for a moment the rose on the wall of the bar, the one the old landlord had hung up and never taken down, caught the light the same way hers did, petals shining like something that had been paid for in full.