Four small black and grey trees in a row tattooed on the inner forearm, shown in two photographs of the same arm on a wooden surface.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four small trees on an inner forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Four small trees sit in a horizontal row across the inner forearm, each with a different silhouette: a round-crowned deciduous tree, a fuller rounded tree, a bare branching tree and a tall conifer. The linework is fine and fairly fine-grained, with soft grey shading inside the canopies and darker trunks. The image shows the same arm twice, once with the hand visible and once as a closer view on a pale wooden surface.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Tree Conifer Forest

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Gwen, the ovens are up to heat and the lane is still black, so I am writing this on the flour sacks with the lamp hung off its hook. You will laugh that I have started keeping a dry list of things, but Mr Pryce says a baker who cannot count her trays cannot be trusted with the rye. Forty-eight cobs, twelve split tins, and the four trees still standing where the lane bends down to the river.

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You asked whether they are still there. They are. The round ash by the gate has dropped its leaves early this year, the way it did the winter Dad went. The beech beside it is holding on to its gold as if it owes somebody money. The birch with its bones showing, I have stopped minding. Then the pine, tall and dark, which Mam said was the only one with any sense, because it never gave up its needles for anybody's opinion.

Here is the thing I meant to tell you. Last Tuesday I came down the lane at four with the cart, and the birch had a single crow sitting in its top branches, quite still, looking at the bakery window as if it had ordered something. I laughed out loud at it, alone in the road. I think I am going to be all right here, Gwen, though I miss you like a burnt crust.

The sky is greying now over the weir. I will put the first batch in the window and carry the tea out to the step, and if you are awake in Leeds, look up the lane. Four trees, the same as always, and me in the flour-white doorway waving with the peel.