Traditional black and grey tattoo of a woman with a blunt fringe, one hand raised to her mouth, on the shoulder and upper arm, with a red rose partly visible at the edge.

Bob-fringed woman with hand at mouth on shoulder

Traditional · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a woman with a blunt bob and fringe, her face partly hidden by a hand with long dark nails raised to her mouth, and her eyes looking out. It uses bold black outlines and solid black fill for the hair, with white stripes cut into the top of the hair and bare skin left as highlights on the face and hand. A second tattoo at the right edge includes red petals and dark leaves, and a dagger-like form is visible at the bottom of the frame.

Traditional Shoulder Upper arm Woman Bob haircut Hand Nail Eye Rose Leaves Dagger

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Vane rang the exchange at twenty to six, the way she always did, and asked for Hollis Terrace in a voice like a dropped spoon. I plugged her through. I had been plugging women through for nine years at the Brackley exchange, and I knew the sound of a husband's name said too carefully. Her line went dead, came back, then went dead again, and I sat with my cord in my hand listening to a man breathing on the far end.

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Nobody in Brackley would have believed I kept my mouth shut. Mavis at the next board couldn't keep a hairpin in her bun. But I kept my fingers over my lips the whole shift, nails painted the colour of the ink in the ledger, while the wires hummed and the lamps blinked their small white accusations. By nine the line to Hollis Terrace had been cut for a week, and the number was no longer in service.

The next Tuesday a black saloon pulled up outside the exchange, and a woman with a blunt fringe like a shut door came up the steps. She asked for me by name. She didn't mention Mrs Vane. She just laid a silver cigarette case on my board and waited, eyes steady, until I understood what I was being paid to forget.

I took it. I have it still, in the drawer under the switchboard, along with a number I never wrote down. Some things a girl learns to hold in her teeth, and the trick is never to look like you're holding anything at all.