Grey scrollwork heart around a red keyhole with three grey skeleton keys and red ribbons, tattooed on the back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Keyhole heart with three skeleton keys

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A heart shape made from grey swirling scrollwork frames a black and red keyhole at the centre. Three grey skeleton keys hang from the base, linked by red ribbon tails that loop through the design and trail off to the upper right. The scrolls are shaded smoothly in greys, with red used as a bold accent against them.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the caravan smells of paraffin again, so forgive the smudge. Pa has finally let me run the lock booth on my own, the one with the painted heart over the flap. Mr Corrigan pays a shilling for every lock opened and a guinea if the crowd cheers.

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On Thursday a young woman came up with a box of keys tied together in red ribbon. Three of them, old iron with the teeth worn to nothing, and she said they belonged to a house in Margate that burned before her mother was born. She didn't want the box opened. She wanted the heart in the middle opened, the one with the keyhole stuck in it. I told her it was only tin and paint, and she laughed and said that was the trick of it.

I took the bent hairpin out of my hair while the organ wound down on the far side of the field. Something gave, though not the lock. The ribbon came loose from the scrolls, and it kept unwinding in my hand, red as a cut, out past the tent poles and up over the big wheel until I couldn't see where it ended. Nobody else looked up. The girl only nodded, took her three keys and walked off towards the station, and I have been wondering since which of us was meant to be the one locked up.

Don't tell Pa. I've kept the hairpin, and I've stitched a length of that ribbon into the collar of my good coat. Write soon and tell me whether the vicarage clock still runs slow. Your loving sister, Win.

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