Black ink floral shoulder tattoo

Dad has finally let me touch the wagon panels. Not the big ones with the gallopers, those are his, but the small rosette boards on the back of the Cakewalk, the ones gone grey with road dust since Hereford. He gave me a pot of black enamel and a brush with three hairs left in it and told me to fill in whatever the sun had taken. I spent two evenings on one rosette, petal by petal, until my fingers smelt like a boot repair shop.

The trick, he says, is to draw the flower from the middle out, the way a tent gets pitched. Start with the eye, a ring of tiny teeth around a button, then the petals fanning out in rows, each one a little smaller than the last, until the whole thing sits in the wood as if it was never not there. The buds hang off the stems on threads so fine you have to hold your breath. Mum calls it fussing. I call it the only honest work on the lot, because nobody can pretend a flower isn't finished when every petal is.

Last night the generator cut out halfway through a set of leaves, and I sat in the dark with the brush still wet, listening to the carousel wind down. Dad came over with a torch, looked at the half-done rosette, and said nothing for so long I thought I'd ruined it. Then he tapped the wood beside it and said, "That one's yours now." I didn't know what to say, so I went and fetched the lamp.

Love, Nell