Small outline heart on a finger

The rain has finally stopped on Hurst Street, so I'm writing this on the back step of the sign shop with my boots in a puddle and the streetlamp buzzing like a wasp. You'll laugh, but I finished the lettering on the bakery window at half eleven. Mr Okafor wanted gold leaf on the name and a small heart in the corner, and I told him a heart needs a line and nothing else. He said plain was fine. He's paying me in day-old loaves, so I'm not complaining.

The thing is, when I was done, a girl in a green coat stopped on the pavement and stood looking at that heart for ages. She had a pencil behind her ear and a paper bag of chips going cold in one hand. I asked if something was wrong. She said no, only that she'd always wanted someone to leave the middle empty, so she could decide what went in it. Then she laughed at herself and walked off towards the canal.

I've been thinking about her all night. I draw that same outline in biro on the margins of my order books when I'm bored, and I never fill it either. Maybe that's the whole trick of it. A line that holds nothing is only waiting.

By morning the dew had beaded on the glass around the outline, and the gold on the name had already caught the first light. The heart sat in the corner clean and black, and somebody had breathed on the window beside it and written a tiny initial inside with a fingernail. Love, Sol.