Both arms and hands submerged in clear blue pool water, with black and grey botanical tattoos on the forearms and upper arms and small tattoos on the fingers.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tattooed arms and hands in a swimming pool

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two tattooed arms reach into clear pool water with the palms facing down, so the hands and wrists are partly distorted by ripples and light. The left arm carries black and grey botanical linework of roses and leaves, while the right forearm has a large shaded circular motif with fine detail. Small tattoos sit on several fingers, and the red nails and silver rings add the only strong colour against the pale blue water.

Botanical Forearm Upper arm Hand Rose Flower Leaves Mandala Moon Ring Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dolly Maddox skimmed the lido every Monday from September, when the council let the water go cloudy and the leaves came down from the sycamores along Mill Lane. By the time the sun slid behind the bathhouse roof, the surface had gone the colour of pewter, and she could make out the tiled moon at the deep end only by the glint of it through the ripples.

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On the third Monday she lifted a silver ring from the drain grate with the tip of her net. It had a pale green stone in a claw, and the band was worn thin on one side, as if someone had turned it with a thumb for years. Dolly dried it on her overall and slipped it into her cardigan pocket, meaning to hand it in at the kiosk.

Ivy Ashby came the next morning, hair pinned under a yellow scarf, her nails the red of pillar-box paint. She did not ask about the ring. She asked whether the roses on the far wall were still there, the ones painted by the lad who had done the signs for the Coronation, and Dolly said they were, faded now to pink and brown.

"I dropped it on purpose," Ivy said. "Every summer I swam the length with my hands out flat, the way my mother taught me, so the water would take a bit of me back. Last year I stopped coming."

Dolly held out the ring. Ivy didn't take it. "Keep it in the kiosk," she said. "If I want it, I'll know where to look." Dolly watched her go out through the turnstile, then walked to the edge of the deep end and let the ring sink, one green flash, until the moon on the tiles was the only thing left shining.