Close-up photograph of a shaded traditional-style tattoo of an ornate skeleton key with a crown and the word love in its bow, on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate skeleton key with love script

Traditional · Black and grey · Photo

A skeleton key tattoo with a decorative bow containing the word love in script, topped by a small crown set with teal gems. The key is shaded in grey and brown with defined outlines and a keyhole detail in the bit. A blurred tattoo is partly visible in the background, and the key sits diagonally across the frame.

Traditional Key Love Crown Gem Scrollwork Keyhole

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The key hangs on a nail above the proving drawers, because Mrs Okonedo, who ran the shop before me, said a key you cannot see is a key you will lose. It is older than the lease. The bow is an iron curl worked into the word LOVE, and someone long ago set a crown on top of it, with little teal stones that catch the oven light when the door is open.

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I unlock the back door at ten to four. The street is empty except for the milk float and a fox that sits by the bins as if it pays the rent. Flour hangs in the lamplight. The bit turns in the lock with the same dry click it has made for thirty-one years. She once told me the lock was older than the key, and when I said that was the wrong way round, she laughed until she had to sit down on a flour sack.

In February the key stuck. I jiggled it, swore at it, then tipped it over my palm and saw a square of paper wedged in the hollow of the bit. It was her recipe for the Sunday tin loaf, in pencil. The flour weight had been crossed out and changed twice, and at the bottom she had written, Leave the back door on the latch when you bake for others.

I have never got the crumb quite as she did. But on Sundays I leave the latch up, and by six there is always someone on the step, hands in their pockets, waiting for the first tray to come out.