Grey shaded tattoo of a heart-shaped padlock with a chain and key on the upper arm, with a small red-pink accent on the shackle.

Heart padlock and key on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A heart-shaped padlock with a keyhole sits at the centre, with a chain looping through the shackle and a key hanging from its lower edge. Several loose chain links trail across the top of the upper arm. The work uses black outlines and grey shading for depth, with a few touches of red and pink on the shackle and links, and the design fills the arm diagonally.

Traditional Upper arm Padlock Heart Chain Key Keyhole Lock

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Haverstock House has been broken since Tuesday, so you climb fourteen flights with the toolbag knocking against your hip and the council's job sheet crumpled in your fist. Mrs Okonedo's padlock is a brass heart her husband bought off a stall in 1979, and he hung it on the balcony gate so nobody could ever shift the railings. The chain has rusted through in two places now, and the loose links lie in the corner like dropped stitches.

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You kneel on the lino and work the picks slowly. The heart doesn't give. Behind you the kettle clicks and she talks without stopping: how he whistled when the bolt went home, how the key always stuck on the left, how she sat on the step of this same balcony every evening for a year after he died, watching the car park. You hear the tumblers settle one by one, the way she described, and you feel the shackle loosen under your thumb.

It takes forty minutes and a good deal of swearing under your breath before the heart springs open in your palm. Mrs Okonedo claps once, the way you'd clap for a child who has learnt to tie its shoes. Then she reaches into her cardigan pocket and pulls out a small brass key on a faded ribbon.

"I never lost it," she says. "I just wanted someone to come up fourteen floors." You laugh, because there is nothing else to do, and she presses two of the rusted links into your hand before you go.