Man in a grey suit and open white shirt with a partly visible black and grey tattoo on the upper chest and neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Partly visible tattoo above a grey suit

Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop shows a man in a grey suit jacket and open white shirt. Dark tattoo linework and shading are visible on the upper chest, rising toward the neck, but most of the design is hidden by the collar. The image is mostly grey and white tones, with the tattoo appearing in black and grey.

Chest

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okonedo had the bolt of grey worsted open across the cutting table before the kettle had boiled, and she was already cross about the chalk. "Too pale," she said, rubbing a line away with her thumb. "Nobody in a funeral parlour wants to look like he's been left out in the rain." Eamon, who had been sweeping pins into the tin for three years and had never once been trusted with the shears, said nothing and watched her fold the cloth in half, then in half again, the way her mother had folded cloth in Lagos before the family came north.

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The order was for a Mr Harcourt, who had booked a fitting for Thursday, cancelled, then booked again for the following Monday with a note asking for the collar to sit higher. Mrs Okonedo read the note twice and tucked it under the tape measure. "Higher means he's hiding something," she said. "Or he's proud of it. With men it's usually one or the other."

Eamon pressed the iron along the lapels while she worked the canvas interlining, and he thought about the old dummy in the back room, the one with a split seam at the shoulder that nobody had ever mended, because it was the only form that still fitted the ghost of a man who had ordered in 1974 and never come back.

On Monday Mr Harcourt came in, took off his coat without being asked, and stood very straight while she pinned the collar. When he turned to the mirror, the cloth lay flat as a closed book, and only the edge of something dark showed above the stitching. Mrs Okonedo tugged the shoulder down a fraction, said it was perfect, and did not ask.