Pools of Venetian Blue

Robin Venetia Ellacott’s first soulmate marks appeared just hours after she was pulled, screaming, into the world: little red poppies and purple dog-violets growing on her skin as though drawn by an invisible brush. The living ink bloomed and twined on her chubby knees and on the palms of her tiny waving hands, just where an adventurous - or clumsy - young boy might find himself with scrapes and bruises in the course of an unseasonably sunny October afternoon.