Fine line outline of a small heart in black ink on the side of a finger, on a hand wearing gold rings against a black top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small outline heart on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand rests against a black top, with several thin and wide gold rings on the fingers. A small heart outlined in thin, dark ink sits on the side of one finger, and part of another mark is cut off at the left edge. The image is in full colour from the jewellery, but the tattoo itself is a single dark grey to black line with no shading.

Fine line Hand Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Bea, the brass shop on Cutler Lane has finally taken me on, though Mr Okonedo says I hold the solder like a man holding a hot potato, so you can laugh now. Yesterday he gave me a bench of my own and a tray of spare band rings to practise on, the thin wire kind that slip off a finger if you breathe on them. I made eleven. The twelfth he let me keep, because I bent it crooked and he said crooked was honest.

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You asked whether I still draw in the margins of my ledgers. I do, mostly hearts, which Mr Okonedo says is a waste of ink on a price list. He doesn't know I've been putting a small one on the back of every invoice that goes out to the widow in Harrow Row, who buys her mourning bands in threes and never once looks up from the counter. I thought you should know, since you were the one who taught me to draw a heart with one unbroken line, no lifting the nib, so that it closes on itself.

The wide gold band I finished last Thursday is the one I am proudest of. It sits on the middle finger and carries the thin wires alongside it like a mother holding small children's hands in a crowd. I told the customer it would tarnish if she wore it swimming. She laughed and said she had nothing left to swim for, and then she bought two.

Write back soon and tell me what the river is doing. Mine is only ever grey, but the bridge at Quill Street shows the sky in it if you stand at the right angle, and I stand there most evenings now, looking.

Yours, Nell