Dark blue-black paisley motifs on three fingers and a scalloped lace-style band across the back of a hand, with pink and turquoise nail polish.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Paisley and lace design on a hand

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the back of a hand with fingers spread, showing small paisley motifs on the top of the middle, ring and index fingers. A scalloped, lace-like band runs across the back of the hand toward the wrist. The dark blue-black ink is set against pale skin on a light background, with pink and turquoise nail polish visible.

Hand Paisley Lace Finger Hand Scallop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have worked the lost property counter at Hollin Cross for eleven years, long enough to know which umbrellas will be claimed and which never will. On a wet Tuesday in March the porter drops a carpet bag on your counter and says it has lain under the seventh bench since the last up train. Inside, folded in tissue paper, is a shawl the colour of old wine, its border worked in paisley teardrops that curl over like seeds.

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You shake it out. Someone has stitched a scalloped edge of black lace along one end, the loops uneven where the needle slipped and was coaxed back. A card is tucked into the corner in faded pencil: Platform 4. If I am not here, keep it for the girl in the green gloves. You have no girl in green gloves. You have a ledger, a rubber stamp and a kettle that takes four minutes to boil.

The next morning a woman in a grey coat asks at the window about a bag left on the 7.40. You describe the shawl without meaning to, the paisley, the black lace like frost on a windowpane. She goes very still, then laughs, a short startled sound, and says her mother wore that pattern to every departure, every station, every leaving. She takes the shawl. She does not take the card, so you slip it into her glove before she turns away.

After she has gone the canopy's iron lace throws its scalloped shadows across the empty counter, and the clock above platform four ticks on towards the next train. You find you are not counting the minutes for once. You stand there a while in the grey light, watching the shadows move.