Two matching fine line tattoos of stick figure girls holding a tin can telephone joined by a string, one on each ankle, shown in red and pink ballet flats.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stick figure girls linked by a string phone

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Two black stick figure girls are tattooed on the inner ankles of a pair of feet, each holding a tin can telephone. A thin black string runs between the two figures, linking them across the feet. The linework is uniform and simple, with no shading, and the ink is entirely black against the skin.

Fine line Ankle Stick figure Girl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The string had gone slack again by Tuesday, and Ruth knew before she reached the wall that Nell wasn't on the other end. She crouched by the drain where the two tins met, one jam tin with its lid levered off, the other a peach tin that still smelled faintly of syrup, and pulled the line until it hummed.

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They had strung it in the summer over the back yard fence, twelve yards of garden twine borrowed from Mr Oakes's shed. It was nailed to the coal-house door on Ruth's side and the wash-house drainpipe on Nell's. The rules were Nell's idea. You said your name first, then the weather, then something true you had seen that day. You never said goodbye, because goodbye made the wire go limp.

In October the Pearsons' van stood in the lane with its doors open and a sofa strapped to the roof. Ruth held the peach tin up at the gate and Nell held hers to her mouth, her breath loud through it. 'Ruth, are you there? It's raining in Hull, I think.' Then her mother called her name in the particular voice mothers keep for leaving, and the line went quiet, and the twine dropped into the nettles.

A parcel came in January with a Hull postmark and no letter, only a card with a drawing of two small girls on it, one with a tin at her ear. On the back, in pencil: Pull twice if you can hear me. Ruth went out in her wellies in the dark, found the wire by feel, and pulled once, then again. Far off across the rooftops, something gave a tiny answering tug, and the twine sang against the wall.