Black and grey traditional tattoo of a hand holding a bouquet of flowers and leaves on a forearm, with dotwork shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hand holding a flower bouquet on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A hand holds a bunch of stylised flowers with leaves and a tied ribbon, with the fingers extending down the arm. The bold black outlines are filled with solid black areas and stippled dotwork shading on the petals and hand. The design is in black and grey ink and sits centred on the limb against a plain turquoise background.

Traditional Dotwork Forearm Hand Flower Bouquet Leaves Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marjorie Pell is already at the buffet when you arrive, a paper plate balanced on one palm like a waiter's tray, and she thrusts a bunch of supermarket carnations at you before you have finished saying hello. The stems are wrapped in foil and tied with green ribbon, knotted twice, the way she used to tie her hair for netball. 'Thirty years,' she says. 'Hold these. I need both hands for the sausage rolls.'

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The hall on Harrow Lane has not changed. The same sprung parquet, the same smell of floor polish and squash, the same clock above the stage running four minutes slow. You scan the tables for faces and find them mostly where you left them: Dennis Vane by the urn, still telling the story about the frog, and Priya Nair, who now runs a bakery two towns over and has sent you three emails about it. Someone has pinned name badges on everybody. Yours says 'Ruth' in a font that looks like a warning.

You sit by the window with the flowers across your lap and start picking at the knot. It is harder than it looks. Inside the ribbon is a folded programme from the summer fête, soft at the creases, and on the back, in pencil, is a list of everyone who owed everyone a pound. Your name is at the top. So is Marjorie's, twice, crossed out and written again beside it in a different hand.

She slides onto the chair beside you and steals a crisp. 'I meant to give you that back in 1994,' she says. 'Then you apologised about the frog, and I thought, well, that's that settled.' You look at the carnations, the pencilled debts, the clock running slow, and understand she has been keeping the account all this time, and you have only just learned you were ever in arrears.