Realistic shaded purple ribbon tattoo with the word Dad and a hanging rosary cross, on the upper back.

Purple ribbon, rosary and cross with Dad

Realism · Back · Colour · Photo

A purple ribbon loops into a figure eight shape with the word Dad in script across its centre. A rosary with beads and a shaded cross hangs from the lower section of the ribbon. The ribbon uses purple ink with grey and white highlights for a dimensional, realistic finish, set against smooth skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mr Harrow,

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The big top came down on Tuesday with the last of the sawdust still in the rigging, and I have been folding canvas ever since. Your tent is in four pieces now, stacked behind the lorry in Hebden Bridge, and the rain has got into the seams the way it always does. I have mended what I could. The purple silk you asked me to keep for the finale is in the tin box under my bunk, wrapped in the tissue we used for the costumes, and I have not let anyone else touch it.

Ruth from the wire act came by this morning asking whether the rosary was hers. It is not. It was in the pocket of the cloak Vesna left behind in Doncaster, the one with the crooked silver cross, and Ruth says Vesna never set foot in a church in her life. I told her a rosary is a rosary and it can keep a grip on a rope as well as anything. She laughed and went off with her coffee.

The ribbon was the one the Dillon boy stitched his name on when he won the gymkhana at Otley. He signed it with a D, crossed the rest out and wrote Dad instead, in his best joined-up hand, because he said he wanted his father to be the one who carried the banner. I never asked whether the father came. I have kept the ribbon folded so the word faces up.

So I am sending the silk back with the tin, and the cross with it, and I will wait here until the spring fair. If you want the show to go on, you know where I am.

Yours in sawdust, Clara

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