‘What do you think?’ Our silence was protracted and Beth’s eyes were starting to lose their shine.
I couldn’t use the word violation knowing what she had been through, but there was no other word to describe how it felt to see myself like that.
‘It’s very . . . intimate,’ I said, at last.
‘I know!’ she said. ‘You can’t plan photos like that. But the door was open when I went to the loo, and I couldn’t help but see you and the light was just . . .’ She held up her fingers in the OK sign. ‘And your camera was sitting on the side, Kit.’ His mouth set in a furious line; he had a stronger reaction to the thought of her touching his precious camera than he’d had at the sight of the photograph. Beth continued, heedless. ‘And I thought about that other photo that your friend took, and what you said about not being aware of it, and I couldn’t resist. I went to the one-hour photo place on the common today.’ Her voice weakened a little with every sentence. ‘I used a really slow shutter speed. The lens is . . .’ She shook her head, her voice diminished to a whisper. ‘You don’t like it.’ She scanned our faces and read them wrong. ‘I’ll replace the film,’ she said, missing the point by miles. ‘It was only from Boots. Sorry, Kit, I didn’t even think you’d notice it was gone.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, but Kit’s silence was louder.
Beth hit herself hard in the forehead with her palm. ‘I thought you’d get it, I thought you’d love it.’
‘I do love it,’ I said, catching her wrist in case she struck herself again. I had forgotten how soft her skin was. ‘It’s just unexpected, that’s all.’
She wriggled free of my grip. ‘I can be a bit full-on,’ she said, addressing the window. It had the ring of something she’d been told about herself more than once. ‘I’ve misjudged it. I’m sorry.’
Later, after an awkward goodbye, Kit and I waited in silence for the street door to slam behind her, unsure whether to laugh or scream.
Kit held the framed picture at arm’s length. ‘How could she possibly think that was ok, on any level?’
‘Well . . . I suppose her judgement’s off, after what she’s been through.’ For all we knew she had always been this direct, always had such fluid boundaries; or perhaps it was a reaction to her ordeal, that she had been stripped back so far that she had decided to leave the nerves exposed in the hope she might eventually become desensitised. This was Beth’s trauma. If this was her way of processing it, who were we to judge?
‘What if I’d had my knob hanging out?’ said Kit.
I stood next to him and looked at the photograph properly; it was easier without the weight of Beth’s expectation.
‘We look good, though.’ I smiled. ‘If you take away the massively creepy nature of it, it’s actually quite beautiful. I didn’t know you slept with my hair in your hand like that.’
‘Neither did I,’ he said, softening. He smoothed down the length of my ponytail.
‘We can look at this when we’re old and saggy,’ I said. ‘Remember what we used to be like. I know it’s not exactly one to have on the mantelpiece, but I’d like to keep it.’
We put it face down in my bedside drawer. It was one of the things that we lost when we went into hiding, and I don’t know where it is now.
Looking back, Kit was right, and I should have been firm but fair at the first opportunity, that time she’d come to see me at work. I shouldn’t have let her into our lives. I should have kept the relationship proper, to use an old-fashioned word.
That night in bed, I couldn’t sleep. I was too aware of what I looked like; too aware of being naked. Only when I got out of bed and put some nightclothes on did I finally relax. I had weird dreams – a sense of being watched, of a figure in the doorway – that I attributed to Beth’s photograph. I didn’t yet realise that my unease was about something more than her trespass. It was the first stirrings of something too big, deep and dark to shove in a drawer or a bin in the street. Something I was not yet ready to name.
Chapter 35
LAURA
20 March 2015
First contact will be at 8.20. The local radio says that the capital will be ‘plunged into rush-hour darkness.’ I could watch the partial eclipse, as it will be over London, from the study, but even with the window open to the white sky it feels wrong to observe it from inside a building.
I braid my hair into a skinny plait that hangs to my waist, then wind it into a bun. Hiding my hair is second nature whenever I leave the house. I’m like a woman whose religion compels her to cover her hair in public; only my husband really sees it loose. The alternative was to cut it, or stop colouring it, and she has taken enough of my soul already. I’m not giving her that.