Colour illustration of a tattoo design with red roses, a grey cameo locket, a silver chain and black filigree swirls on a pink background.

Roses, cameo locket and chain design

Botanical · Colour · Flash

The design shows three full red roses and a bud arranged around an oval silver locket containing a white cameo profile of a woman. A silver chain loops across the composition, with black filigree vines and leaves filling the spaces between the flowers. The roses are shaded in warm reds and pinks with soft highlights, while the cameo and chain are rendered in greys, and the whole piece sits on a pink gradient background.

Botanical Neo-trad Rose Cameo Chain Filigree Leaves Vine Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Win,

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The 7.40 has gone without me again, so I am writing this on the bench under the clock at Harrowgate, where the porter has stopped pretending he does not know me. Your mother's locket is in my coat pocket wrapped in the blue handkerchief, and I have taken it out four times since the train pulled away. The cameo is still whole. The lady on it has kept her chin up through two winters and a bomb at the goods yard, which is more than can be said for the sign on platform four.

I should tell you about the chain, because you will only hear the rest from Mrs Pell and she will get it wrong. Her husband mended the clasp in March, working at his bench above the ironmonger's with a jeweller's glass screwed into one eye. He said the silver had been polished so often it was thinner than a lady's promise, and he wanted the links fixed before it snapped on a platform. He would not take a penny. He only asked that I bring the locket back to you the way it was given, with the rose bud from the signal box garden tucked behind the oval where your mother hid her ration tickets.

I found the bud there this morning, dried brown as tea, and I have been turning it over while the station fills and empties. The signalman says the roses will flower again by June, whatever the war has done to the wall.

Come to the platform on Saturday. Bring the chain. I will be the one holding the locket up to the light, waiting for the carved woman to turn her face toward you.

Love, Dad