Small black script tattoo on the back of a leg just above the ankle, with taupe wedge sandals on a wooden floor.

Small script tattoo near ankle with taupe wedges

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A pair of legs and feet in taupe wedge sandals with crossed straps stand on a wooden plank floor. A small black script tattoo sits on the back of one leg just above the ankle, with words too fine and small to read. Muted taupe, tan and wood tones dominate the frame, with coral-painted toenails adding a small touch of colour.

Lettering Ankle Script Word Leg

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The planks on the new quay came up soft this week, so I have been sitting in the back of the shop with the window open and the gulls shouting over the nets. Mr Pellow's boy brought me a pair of taupe leather offcuts from the tannery in Penzance, and I have spent three evenings cutting the straps on a slant so they cross over the instep like the ropes on a moored dinghy. You would have laughed at me, measuring the heel height with a bit of driftwood.

The lady who ordered them came in on Tuesday with a list of wants. High at the back, nothing that clacked on the boards, and a zip hidden at the heel so nobody would see her struggle with a buckle in the hotel lobby. She did not say why she needed them, and I did not ask. She only wanted a seam stitched deeper inside the heel counter, where a folded square of paper could sit flat. I told her that was a foolish place to keep a thing, and she said that was exactly why nobody would look.

I finished them this morning and carried them up the hill myself. She turned them over in the doorway and laughed when the straps caught the light off the harbour. Then she held one shoe against her chest a moment, the way you hold a letter you have read too many times, and I saw she had written something on the paper before I could see what it said.

Walking home, I thought about you on the ferry, and that I still have not fixed the damp patch above your old bench. Write soon. Tell me the crossings are no worse than last spring.

Yours, Tom