Fine line black key with a heart-shaped bow on the inner wrist of a hand held palm-down, with red nail varnish visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart-bowed key on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black key tattoo sits on the inner wrist, with its bow shaped like a heart and a thin shaft with simple notched teeth. The linework is fine and even, with solid black ink and no visible shading. The photograph shows the hand hanging downward against a dark background, with the tattoo centred on the wrist.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The reunion is in the function room above the Crown, and you arrive late with a carrier bag of Hobnobs because nobody told you the dress code was whatever you'd have been caught wearing in 1998. Ruth Akroyd is leaning on the bar with a lanyard round her neck and a sandwich bag held out between two fingers. Inside is a brass key, its bow cut into a heart, its teeth notched by hand rather than by machine. "Locker 114," she says. "Behind the science block. Mr Pemberton swore it was welded shut."

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You remember the locker because you were the only one who ever opened it, and only for one term. The padlock had a heart scratched into its brass with a compass point, and you were fifteen and certain that meant something. You lost the key down a drain on Hallam Road the spring before you moved away and never told anyone, least of all the girl who had shared the locker with you.

You unfold the note taped to the bag. It is written in purple gel pen, the ink gone soft at the folds: "Bus shelter, Friday. If you ever find the key, bring it back." The date is the week before your dad's job took you to Leeds. Across the room, Ruth is already handing a bag like hers to a man you don't recognise until he laughs the way he used to.

You slide the key onto your own ring instead of the table, where it would only be handed on again. The heart catches the strip light as you cross the room, and for once you know exactly which Friday you owe.

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