Close-up of a black ink heart-shaped banner tattoo with lettering on the outer thigh, above black lace lingerie and beside a fur coat and cash.

Heart banner tattoo on a thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up photograph of a thigh with a black ink tattoo of an ornate heart outline wrapped in a ribbon banner carrying lettering, partly hidden by black lace lingerie. The tattoo uses bold outlines with fine detailing in the scroll and border, and the skin tone and ink contrast are clear. The composition is cropped tightly, with a brown fur coat, a stack of banknotes and a gold ring in the foreground and background.

Lettering Thigh Heart Banner Lettering Banknote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada counted the takings for the third time that week, licking her thumb before each note the way her father had taught her, though the notes were fewer now and softer from handling. The big top had sagged in the Wigan rain and the ring boys had gone home to Bolton without their wages. Behind her, the wagon's tailboard was propped open, and the heart banner the painter had made in 1958 hung from its pole, its gilt ribbon curling over a single word that the damp had mostly eaten.

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Her brother wanted to sell the gold ring their mother had worn on the high wire. He had it on the table between the tea urn and the cash tin, turning it so the lamp caught the inner band. "It's only metal," he said. "The ring won't fly us to Skegness."

Ada tied the notes with a rubber band and set them on the ring. She thought about the painter, a man called Lenny Prosser who signed every banner in the bottom corner with a tiny crown. He had painted that heart when the show still had three elephants and a band that could play a whole waltz without falling apart. The outline was bold and black, the scrollwork along the border fine as lace, and in the middle, in capitals, was the promise. Nobody had ever asked what it promised. It was just what the show said.

In the morning she took the ring to the pawnshop on Standishgate and came back with the money, the tin, and a tired new idea. She pinned the banner across the grass, mixed a little of her brother's black paint with turpentine, and painted the missing letters onto the ribbon. Ever, she wrote. Then, underneath, smaller: still here.