Small outlined heart on the top of a foot

The plimsolls come in just before midnight, carried by a woman in a wet raincoat who doesn't sit down. Size two, canvas gone grey, the rubber toe cap split like a ripe pea pod. She sets them on the bench and turns the left one over. Inside the heel, in blue biro, someone has drawn a heart. One line, no shading, the loop not quite closed at the top. "Keep that," she says. "Whatever you do to the sole, keep that."

You work until the lamp begins to hum. Hot glue, a strip of new rubber, the stitch count you learned from your father before he stopped coming in. When the sole is seated you take a fine nib and trace the heart again onto the fresh lining, matching the wobble at the top, because a perfect copy would look wrong. Your hand is steadier than it was at twenty. The rain stops around three.

She comes back at seven with a flask and no umbrella. She turns the shoe in the grey light, presses the heel with her thumb, and nods at the new lining. "He drew it the first night we were home," she says, which tells you nothing you can use, and she pays in coins you count twice. When she has gone you wipe the nib clean and find a blue dot on your thumb, and you leave it there.