Black script lettering reading promise along the side of a finger, with a diamond eternity ring on another finger.

Promise lettering on a finger

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand with pale painted nails rests against dry grass, showing the word promise written in black cursive script along the side of the index finger. The lettering has a fairly thin, even line and sits along the length of the finger, following its shape. A metal band set with small clear stones is worn on the middle finger, and the image is shown in natural daylight with soft focus on the background.

Lettering Hand Promise Word Script Ring Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The verge outside Hallow Cross had gone the colour of old toast, and the Cortina had been ticking for an hour before Dad admitted it wasn't coming back. We sat on the bonnet with a flask of stewed tea between us, watching the heat lift off the tarmac. In my coat pocket was Gran's ring, the thin band with the small stones that had long since lost their shine, and I kept turning it with my thumb the way she used to when the bingo was going badly.

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She had made me promise at her kitchen sink, three weeks before the hospital. Give it to Ellen, she'd said, when Ellen gets married, not before, and not to anyone who asks nicely. Ellen was twenty-six and had never been asked anything nicely in her life, so I didn't see the urgency. I thought Gran was being dramatic, the way she was about everything from the price of bread to the Pope.

Dad walked off down the lane to find a phone box. I stayed with the car and the grasshoppers and the milestone with its half-rubbed number, and I worked the ring on and off until the metal went warm. By the time the breakdown van came I had decided a promise was only heavy if you let it be. I took a biro from the glovebox and wrote the word along my finger so I would see it every time I reached for something I had no business reaching for.

Ellen married a dentist in March. I gave her the ring in the church porch, and she said, quite seriously, that Gran would have hated the dentist. Then she laughed until she had to sit down on the step.