A Photograph Without a Pair

On Monday morning Katherine rang the office and asked for a week's unpaid leave. Her boss, Mr Golding, said, "Of course, Katherine, take as long as you need," in the tone of a man who'd just been told she finally had a personal life. In twelve years she had never taken a single day outside the schedule.

Nigel rang the workshop. Florence didn't ring anyone.

The blue card now lay in the inside pocket of Katherine's bag, wrapped in a napkin. She had checked on it twice in the night.

At ten the doorbell rang. Mrs Abbott — eighty, tiny, holding a jar of homemade plum jam out in front of her like an identity card.

"I won't stay long," she said, and stayed an hour.

Mrs Abbott talked about Mum as if she'd just popped out to the shop and would be back any minute: how Margaret pruned her roses at dawn so no one would see her talking to them.

"And every March she went to Norwich," Mrs Abbott said. "For two days. To see a friend, she said. I asked once what friend, and she smiled and said, 'An old one, Dot. A very old one.'"

Katherine felt Nigel nudge her foot under the table.

"And this spring," the neighbour went on, lowering her voice, "that Pierce man was round a lot. The estate agent. Once I saw her sitting on the bench in the garden after he'd gone, crying. Margaret never cried in front of people. Never."

"Mrs Abbott," Katherine asked carefully, "do you have a key to our house?"

"I did. Margaret gave me the spare about five years ago, just in case." The old woman suddenly looked flustered. "But in the spring I gave it to Mr Pierce. He said Margaret had said it was all right — he needed to value something in the house while she was at the doctor's. He promised to bring it back. Must have forgotten."

When Mrs Abbott had gone, no one spoke for a long while.

"I'll get a locksmith," Nigel said at last. "Change the locks today."

"And the police?" Florence asked.

"With what?" Katherine shook her head. "We need more."

Florence went upstairs to sort through Mum's bedroom. Katherine stayed with her lists, re-counting what had already been counted, because it was the only thing that stopped her hands from shaking.

Florence called her forty minutes later. Not loudly. Which was exactly why Katherine went up at once.

Her sister was sitting on Mum's bed. Beside her lay an old Bible in a black cover — Mum's, from her confirmation — and on Florence's lap was a photograph.

"It was between the pages," Florence said. "Psalm one hundred and thirty-nine."

Katherine sat down beside her.

A black-and-white photo with the white scalloped border they trimmed prints with in the seventies. A girl of about nineteen in a hospital gown, long fair hair tangled on the pillow. She wasn't looking at the camera. She was looking at the baby in her arms — tiny, wrinkled, wrapped in a blanket with an embroidered corner.

Katherine knew that face. She knew every line of it, though she had never seen it so young or so defenceless.

"That's Mum," she said.

"Turn it over."

On the back, in Mum's handwriting — not yet firm, still round, a girl's hand — was written:

"Thomas. 14 March 1974. Forgive me."

And below it, a photo studio's stamp: "Bartley & Son, Norwich."

Katherine stared at the three lines until they blurred.

"Mum married Dad in seventy-nine," Florence said quietly. "You were born in eighty-two. This is… this is five years before the wedding, Kat."

"I can count."

Florence didn't take offence. She just took her hand.

"The album for seventy-three to seventy-five," Florence said. "It's missing because she couldn't keep it with the others. Because those were the years he was in."

"We don't know what this means," Katherine said. "Maybe it's a friend's baby. Maybe—"

"Kat. 'Forgive me.'"

Katherine fell silent.

Downstairs Nigel was talking to the locksmith. Katherine thought that once he saw the photo, it would become true for all three of them. And there'd be no going back.

"You show him," she said. "I'll be down in a minute."

Florence went. Katherine stayed on Mum's bed, which still smelled of her hand cream.

She took the napkin out of her bag, unfolded it and laid two things side by side: the hospital photo and the blue card from Norwich.

"You made your choice a long time ago."

Now she understood what choice. A nineteen-year-old girl in a hospital gown, not looking at the camera because she can't take her eyes off the child who's about to be taken from her. Or whom she's about to give away herself. Katherine didn't know which was worse.

All her life she had been the eldest. The eldest sister, the eldest child, the one who was responsible, the one who rang every Sunday at nine, who made the lists, who was first to take the coat off the hook. It wasn't just a place in the family. It was who she was.

And now, on Mum's bed, lay a photograph of a man born eight years before her.

Katherine Harlow had never been the eldest.

She sat there a long time holding the card, and for the first time in her life she didn't know which column to put it in.