Lace garter tattoo on the thigh

Her name was Marisol Vance, though the fairground called her Little Thread, because she could mend a torn sleeve in the time it took the strongman to spit. The fair wintered at Harrowgate that year, and the wind came off the moor like a knife. Her mother had made lace for the Lady of the big house, scallops stitched so fine you could read a letter through them. When the mother died, Marisol kept the pattern book under her bunk, and at the back of it was a mandala drawn in faded ink: a heart-shaped panel with tassels hanging from it like rain off a gutter.

The Lady wanted a garter, a band of lace to hold up a bride's stockings at a March wedding, and nobody else would take the commission because the chains were so fine they snapped if you breathed on them. Marisol sat three nights by a paraffin lamp, dotting each scallop with the point of a needle until her fingers went numb. On the third night the chains were finished, every diamond and tassel hanging true, and she tied the thing to a hook above the caravan door just to admire it.

The wind rose that night and swung the whole garter like a little bell. By morning the hook was bare, and the bride went down the aisle with nothing at her knee but her own nerve. The garter turned up months later on the Lady's sister, who swore a ghost had sewn it. I say it was simply the best work anyone in that county ever did, and that Marisol took her wages and bought a grey mare. Now off you go, the fire's out.