Close-up of a traditional-style tattoo of a colourful moth with teal and purple eyespots, set beside a red flower and black fern leaves.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Colourful moth with eyespots

Traditional · Colour · Photo

A close-up of a moth with outspread wings, showing large teal and purple eyespots with black centres and bands of orange, red and yellow. Bold black outlines and shaded grey areas on the body give the moth depth, and a large pink flower and black fern-like leaves sit behind it. Colour ink dominates the image, with the wing patterns in saturated tones against pale skin.

Traditional Moth Flower Leaves Fern Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The moth has been living behind the wardrobe in number four since Tuesday, and Mrs Pryce has decided it is your job to see it out before the Hollands come down for their kippers. She hands you a jam jar with the lid punched full of holes and a rolled-up copy of the Sunday supplement. You climb the narrow stairs with the jar held out in front of you like a lantern, past the framed photographs of rowing crews nobody has rowed with since the war.

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Inside, the room smells of camphor and sea salt. The moth isn't hiding. It sits on the rim of the washstand with its wings spread wide, and the eyespots on the forewings stare back at you, teal rings with black pupils and a purple crescent set into each one, as though it has been waiting all week for someone sensible to turn up. The pink geranium on the wallpaper has faded to the colour of old gums. You don't roll the newspaper. You tip the jar gently and wait, and after a long minute it climbs onto the glass lip with its feet placed like a pianist's.

Downstairs, Mrs Pryce is slicing bread at the pass-through. "Well?" she asks, and you say it went out the window. She nods as if she has known all along that you would lie. Breakfast arrives with the Hollands' small boy, who spots a powder of orange and teal on the banister rail and wants to know who has been painting in the house. Nobody answers him.

Later, on the landing, you notice the back-bedroom window has been left open an inch, the way it always is in August, for whatever else might want to see the sea.