Heart flash sheet with swirls

Stanley Fenn came in at ten past eleven, smelling of rain and pipe tobacco, and asked for something for his wife's fortieth. He didn't want a verse. He wanted hearts, he said, but not the sort you bought in a packet. Ivy took down the old sheet from the nail above the till, the one she had drawn by hand the winter her mother died, twelve hearts in a grid with a tall swirl standing in the middle like a candle. The vine-leafed one made him frown. The cluster of tiny hearts made him laugh.

He chose the tall centre piece, red heart threaded through with black tendrils. "Margaret always said the curls were where the heart went when it got bored," he said, and then he went quiet and looked at the price on the shelf as though it had changed. Ivy didn't offer to help him with the words. She cut the stencil slowly, keeping the blade close to the line where the scroll tightened, and folded it into a clean envelope.

When he had gone she swept up the offcuts. Most went in the bin, but one small red heart had come out whole from the corner of the card, its tail still curled. She turned it over in her palm for a while, then tucked it into the pocket of her apron, where the pencil stubs and the rubber lived, and went back to the guillotine.