Close-up of a traditional style tattoo of a grey eye with a tear, framed by blue and pink flowers and the words WHEN YOU'RE READY above it.

Crying eye with flowers and script

Traditional · Mixed · Photo

A realistically shaded grey eye with a single tear running down the cheek sits at the centre of the design, with a black eyeliner stroke and lashes drawn in bold outline. Blue and pink flowers with green leaves form a loose arc around the eye, and the phrase WHEN YOU'RE READY is written in black lettering across the top. Colour ink is used on the flowers and skin tones, while the eye itself is shaded in greys, and other tattoos are partly visible at the edges of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Pavilion band had been playing 'Moonlight Serenade' since half eight, and Eddie Marsh had been crossing the floor for the best part of an hour without once getting as far as my pillar. I watched him nod at Doreen from the laundry, at the Halliwell twins, at a sailor who couldn't have been more than seventeen. Every nod was a small cruelty. Mum had told me to keep my chin up and my gloves on, and I had done both, though my left eye had started to sting, the way it does after too long in the smoke.

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In my handbag was a pot of blue ink I'd bought off the barber on Harbour Street, and a sheet of Basildon Bond folded into quarters. I had written on it, in my best hand, 'When you're ready, I'm by the pillar', then crossed out 'I'm' and written 'I've been'. It seemed a foolish thing to carry. Still, I had pinned three pink sweet peas to my collar, the way the girls did when they meant business, and I wasn't going to take them off just because the evening had gone soft at the edges.

He came at ten to eleven, when the band had moved on to 'Goodnight Sweetheart' and the lights had begun their slow climb. He didn't ask me to dance. He stood beside me, looked at the flowers and said, 'You've been waiting a while, then.' I said I had. He said he'd been ready since March, only he'd been too frightened to walk across a room with his hands in his pockets. My eye chose that moment to let a single tear run down, cold as a tap, and I let it. Eddie took a handkerchief from his breast pocket, pressed it into my palm and held out his other hand.

We danced the last waltz with the handkerchief still balled in my fist, and I didn't wipe my face once.

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