Ink sketch of a young girl with her hair in a bun, holding three balloons, drawn in brown and red ink on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Girl holding three balloons sketch

Colour · Flash

A line drawing shows a small girl with her hair in a bun, wearing a short dress and holding a cluster of three balloons that rise above her head. The linework is sketchy, with hatched shading on the balloons and the dress and loose strokes around the feet. The drawing uses warm brown and orange ink with touches of red on the dress, set on a plain white background.

Girl Balloon Dress Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit still, the lot of you, the wasps are at the windfalls and I'll not tell this twice. You want the story of Nell Ashdown and the three balloons? Right, then. It was the last week of August at Hollin's orchard, the Pippins were coming down heavy, and the travelling fair had packed up in the lane the night before, leaving behind one man, one cart, and a bunch of red rubber nobody had bothered to take.

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Nell was seven and had a jar of pennies she'd been saving since Whitsun. She gave the man every last one, and he tied her three balloons to a length of string and told her to keep hold of it, because the wind up on the ridge would have them off to Wales before teatime. She didn't believe him. She walked the rows with them bobbing over her head, counting the apples she meant to eat, and every so often a gust took the balloons and she had to skip to keep her feet on the grass.

Then she climbed the old Bramley to see the whole valley, and the string snagged on the highest branch. She could have cried. Instead she sat very still, the way her grandfather did when a hare was watching him, until the wind dropped and the balloons sank low enough for her to unhook them. By then the sun was going down behind the church and the orchard was full of wasps and gold light.

Old Abel, who keeps the gate, says a red balloon still hangs in that Bramley every harvest, gone the colour of a Cox's skin and too high for any ladder. Nell never went back for it, he says. She had three to start with, and two were enough to get her home. Mind the wasps on your way out.