The Photograph

May 1999:

The flash was like a halo. In the second it took to envelop them, she was reaching up to fix his tie, shimmying the smooth material so that the knot fit securely, with perfect symmetry, into his collar. The fingers of her right hand rested on the fabric in a neat arc, like a violinist’s. Her left arm was nestled tightly into the space between her body and his, where she could feel the warm strength of his chest beneath the thin linen of his shirt. Her shoulders, uncovered and golden in the soft glow of the marquee lights, were thrown back. The lights picked out the graceful hollow at the base of her neck where her head was turned and tilted upwards towards his. Their eyes met with an unblinking certainty that seemed to create its own centre of gravity, pulling them together so powerfully that his arm – pressing her tightly against his own body – seemed superfluous. A flicker of a smile danced across both of their lips, creating a shared expression that was at once playful and solemn. They were symbiotic, woven into each other; two hearts that beat with a single pulse.

It was their friend’s wedding. The white dress and the bouquet gleamed with stability and certainty – the vast stretch of comfort and routine – somewhere outside of the camera’s focus. But they were something more. Their love was fierce and defiant, unbound. While others would marry off, have children and mediocre holidays and bicker relentlessly, they would be transcendent. Looking into his eyes as the shutter clicked, she saw herself – contained, held, refracted by him – and knew that his image would be the same in her eyes. Their mirrored images interwove and multiplied, different iterations of themselves rippling off into a distance that was infinite and mystical.

A few weeks later, she had the photo printed and framed. It was hung in the hallway of their shared home, next to the old mirror they had found in a car boot sale. As the front door opened each evening when she returned from work, the light danced across the hallway, pirouetting from the mirror to the wall, before alighting on their image. Briefly, the picture was lit up again, as if being taken afresh. Then when the door swung shut the glow receded, leaving the photo to fade comfortably into the fabric of their home.

July 2000:

As her key turned in the lock, she heard a shuffle on the stairs within. He had paused and turned around to greet her, throwing his arms open as the door clicked shut behind her. She buried her face into his shoulder, breathing in deeply the musky, earthy scent of him. He spoke into her hair (‘How was your day? How did the meeting go?’) and she let her mouth answer for her, rumbling along the tracks of her usual replies. She settled into the vibrations of his voice, letting them tumble down from the top of her head through her body.

After standing like this for some time she tilted her head back, eager now to catch each feeling as it travelled across his features while he spoke. She had always liked how expressive his face was. In doing this her eyes caught on the photograph, fixed in its place on the wall behind him. In the time since it had first been hung there, the sun had seeped into it, saturating the white of the marquee behind them. Infinitesimally, the white crept towards their figures, engulfing them in its glow.

Looking now from the photograph to the mirror, she noted the tilt of her head, her hand on his chest, his protective arm about her waist, and felt an immediate sense of recognition. Without thinking she adjusted her posture, the angle of her head and even the curve of her lips. With each minute change she hoped to bring herself into focus, to match the couple in the hallway with the couple in the frame. He stopped mid-sentence as she shifted his hold on her to be able to better see their reflection, and gave her a quizzical glance. She looked back at him, her brow furrowed in confusion and frustration. Her eyes flicked once more between the image and the mirror before she let go of him and walked off into the house.

March – April 2002:

The photograph came loose from its hanging. It swayed, drunkenly, against the wall every time the front door was opened or closed. It stayed this way for three months before she eventually gave up waiting for him to fix it. She moved it into the living room, next to the TV.

December 2002:

The house was silent as she let herself in. In the sodium glow of the streetlamps which came through the fanlight, she could see the blank space on the wall where the photograph had been. She paused, trying to work out where he was in the soft darkness of the house. Quiet chatter, interspersed with canned laughter, drifted to her from the living room. Here she found him lying on the sofa, caught somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. His eyelids fluttered as he tried to open them. He murmured gently and shifted on the sofa, making space for her to lie next to him.

She lay down, curving her body to fit the shape of his. In the darkness, the flickering light of the TV caught on the metal photo frame. Within, she could just about trace the shadowy outline of herself. As the shifting blue light of the screen moved across it, her figure emerged briefly before receding, ghost-like, into darkness. She closed her eyes and slept.

July 2003:

Unable to sleep because of the heat, they watched game shows together into the small hours. At intervals they entangled then disentangled their bodies, peeling their sweaty limbs from each other and the sofa cushions. In the moments of stillness between these (slightly fraught) movements, she looked across at his face. Were his eyes flicking across to the photo frame? Or was it just a trick of the moving light from the TV as it played across his irises? Her skin prickled.

Recently, she had tried doing her makeup differently. She painted her lips in shades of rose, peony and fuchsia, painstakingly outlining the curves of her cupid’s bow. She drew her eyeliner further out across her eyelids, flicking it upwards in a way that was intended to make her look doe-eyed and bashful. She carefully monitored these efforts in the hallway mirror as she came and went. Each time, the empty space on the wall stared blankly at her.

January 2004:

Once when they were lying in bed together, almost asleep, he said a woman’s name. She felt a sickening jolt in her core. A surge of panic, then fury, propelled her violently towards wakefulness. She surfaced from sleep as someone who is drowning bursts to the surface, gulping air into her lungs.

It was only once she had regained her breath that she sounded out the name again, and realised that it was her own.

February 2004:

When the door shut behind him on Wednesday morning, she immediately rushed down the stairs towards the living room. At the threshold she paused, staring at the photo frame as it gleamed in the early-morning sun. Over the preceding days and weeks she had turned the options over in her mind: if she threw it away, he would ask questions about its absence; if she moved it to another room, he would just move it back. Rotating it slightly to face the wall made sense. This way, she could be sure of just how much he noticed its presence – why should a slight shift in its orientation mean so much to him? If he turned the photograph back around to face the room, she would know how he really felt.

Moving swiftly across the room, she made to twist the frame around and then leave as quickly as possible. But her fingers lingered on the cool metal, aware before she was of a hidden desire to look. She picked up the picture and pored over the image of herself, forcing herself to observe the glossy hair, the slender neck and the glow of adoration which lit up his face as he looked at her. Her whole body thrummed with terror and disappointment. Placing the frame in its new position of exile, she hastily left the room, taking care not to catch her reflection in the hallway mirror as she left.

That evening, when she returned home, she shut the front door silently behind her before creeping across the empty hallway. Her heart slammed against her chest with such force that she was convinced he would hear it. She knew where he would be, and the gentle electronic chatter of the TV confirmed it to her. She edged closer to the doorway, determined that he wouldn’t be alerted by the sound of her footsteps. Gripping onto the doorframe, she carefully shifted her weight onto her left foot so that she could look into room.  And there it was. Glinting maliciously in the shifting light from the TV. He had turned it back. A thrill of fury shot through her veins and she saw herself screaming obscenities at him, hurling pillows, furniture and clothes. ‘How could you!’ she would growl at him, crouched and wounded, from across the room. But she didn’t want to make a scene. Instead, she turned in the hallway and tiptoed up to bed, leaving an air of silent betrayal in her wake.  

May 2004:

The solution had been obvious the whole time really. Once more, she waited for the door to shut behind him before stealing downstairs to the living room. This time, she didn’t hesitate before picking it up and unclipping the back. The photograph sighed softly as it was released from the frame, falling helplessly to the floor. She picked it up and began to cut, carefully and precisely at first, then with gleeful abandon. Shreds of photograph paper littered the carpet beneath her like dirty snow. Eventually, she stopped and held up her handiwork to the light, exhaling deeply.

When he returned home that evening, their photograph was in its usual place next to the TV. He remained in the same beatific pose; his arms still outstretched, his smile as sincere as ever. But now his eyes gazed with adoring intensity at an abyss. All that remained of her was a blank silhouette, an absence. The black velvet backing showed through mutely.  

All that evening she watched him with a kind of eagerness, her eyes frantically flicking back and forth between the photograph and his eyes to catch his reaction. He didn’t seem to notice.