The tailor fingered the ridges and notches of the keys for a familiar blade. He blinked as a grey strand broke free of his curled mid-length hair, but his eyes were fixed on a lower corner of the shutters that ran down tracks on the wall between his shop and the haberdasher’s. Rust grew where it touched the water seeping from the haberdasher’s potted camellias. It swelled like an infected scab on the tailor’s gleaming shutters, which were painted in red with his father’s name, also his. The W in Weng Loke Tailoring had begun to fade, but the tailor would do nothing about it until he finished the dress.

His slim hands shook, but not from his seventy years. Beside the orange lesions, blush pink petals guarded their pale hearts and glowed in defiance, as though their beauty absolved them. The task of finding the right key became too much at that moment, but he could not turn his eyes from them to the keys in his hands. At length he found the right key and crouched on the ground to slide it into the lock. His ears pricked for the catch as it fit into place, and the crunch of the latch. Well-oiled shutters lapped as each unit folded into place over another.

• Tags: Eliane Boey, fiction, Issue 26, Singapore