Matching script name and footprint tattoos

The boots came in at ten past nine on a Thursday, when I was already thinking about my tea and the last bus. Two pairs, both size twelve, one red leather and one brown, tied together by their laces as if they'd been walked home that way. Mr Okafor from the flats on Constitution Street had them under his arm and a face like he'd run the whole way. He said his daughters had fallen out in the car park, the sort of falling out that ends with a shoe in a bin, and could I bring the brown pair's sole back before Sunday.

I did it that night under the strip light, with the radio on low and the shutter half down. Inside the red boot's tongue someone had written MEILANI in biro, and under it, smaller, ALEXANDRA, both in the careful loops of a child who was practising. The sole had worn to the same grey shape a foot leaves on wet sand: heel first, then the ball, then the little toes bunched up like a row of commas. I stitched it, polished it, and left the names alone.

On Sunday the girls came in together. Neither said sorry. Meilani took the red pair and Alexandra the brown, and they stood in my doorway swapping on one foot each, laughing at the squeak the new sole made on the lino. I thought, that's a lot of walking for two people who share one pair of feet between them.

They left with the laces knotted over one shoulder. I stood in the doorway a while after, watching the prints they left on the wet pavement, two sets side by side, the same shape exactly, until the rain came and smoothed them flat.

Love, Ada