I stare down at the date-labeled cameras and I consider taking them out into the back yard, tossing them into a trashcan and setting them alight. For a moment, I think it would feel like a release, like letting go. But then I imagine the sense of loss after the plastic, cardboard and the film had been eaten away by the flames, and I feel empty inside.
I stand up and hurry downstairs, heading straight for the kitchen. I haven’t bought food here, there’s nothing in the fridge, but thankfully I did switch the refrigerator on when I got back. The freezer’s made just enough ice cubes in the tray for my purpose. I grab them in an old mixing bowl and then head back upstairs. I close my bedroom door, pulling my worn old dressing gown off the hook on the back, and I toss it on the floor, kicking it up against the gap to block out any ambient light. Next, I pull down the blackout blinds I convinced my mother to install for me and I switch on the red light hanging over my bed. The room is lit then by a dim crimson glow, providing enough contrast and shadow that I can see what I’m doing. All of my old developing equipment is still in the basket along with the cameras. Developer, my old stop bath, fixer, LFN—everything is exactly where I left it. I already have an unopened bottle of distilled water by my bedside from when I was hung over the other day. There’s a good chance that the fixer and the developer in my kit have chemically altered over the years they’ve been sitting gathering dust but I’m willing to risk ruining a few images to find out.
I work quickly as I set up the rest of the equipment I need on my old desk: measuring cups, my reels, cassette opener, changing bag, thermometer and timer. I’m so well versed in dark room practices now that I don’t need to use a thermometer and timer anymore. I have developing down to a fine art. Still, I set everything up the way I used to when I was younger, following the exact process I did back then. It was almost a religious ritual for me, something I took such huge fucking pride in.
The developer’s too warm to be any good right now. I pour out a cup and place it into my makeshift ice bath, and then I wait. Selecting a camera to use in this experiment is tough. There’s a good chance this won’t work and I’ll end up destroying the roll, so I have to be okay with losing whatever I open up. It’s so hard to remember what was happening and when during the time we spent jumping out on each other and taking pictures. March? What the fuck was happening in March? Spring was launching into full effect early that year. It was abnormally hot. I remember Coralie covered in flowers, the two of us lying on our backs on the riverbank, the sky so blue overhead. I remember Coralie sneaking into my house for the first time, after me trying to talk her into it for weeks. Knowing what I know now, she’d been so brave to do it at all. I would never have tried to convince her to do it if I’d known how crazy her father was. What it would have meant for her if she’d been caught.
I put March back in the basket. June next. I was teaching her to drive during our free periods. Her father wouldn’t let her get a car, wouldn’t even pay for her to have lessons. He told her that she wasn’t competent enough to drive, and that giving her the means to drive a car would only get her hurt. I’m willing to bet that he didn’t want to give her the necessary skills to escape him, though.
October. October was the month before Coralie had sprung the news on me that she was pregnant. It was the only time we’d ever fought. She’d seemed highly-strung and nervous all the time. We argued constantly for three days and then we hadn’t spoken for a whole week. It had sucked. There won’t be a better month to choose than this one if I need to find images I don’t mind losing. The whole film is probably full of shots of Callan Cross voodoo dolls with pins sticking out of their eyeballs.
I crack the cassette and prep the film. The developer’s ready so I mix up the solution and go to work. I pace up and down while I wait for the first of the images to develop. I can only soak five sheets at a time, so I have to do them in stages. Eventually the shots start to emerge onto the paper.
The first image is a picture of Coralie and I together, two idiots grinning into the camera lens. We look so young. So happy. So ridiculously in love. It’s amazing how little she’s changed since then. I look a little older, I guess. Harder, somehow, like there’s a barrier between me and the outside world now.