Outside the Frame

Tessa had put an old archive box on the stage, clear of the damp patch beside the windowsill. WERF 03/04 was written on the lid in blue marker. She taped a list of the material they could examine to the wall. Permission to select for the exhibition, not to publish.

'I still have rights in those photographs,' she said. 'And the people in them get a say too.'

'Understood.'

'Mostly for Fleur's benefit. Yesterday she asked if I couldn't just put everything in a folder everybody could access.'

Hester said she would be revising the programme with Fleur later that afternoon. Tessa asked whether this was about the invitations. Hester said Robin had introduced herself and she herself had corrected an old statement with the police. She left it there. Tessa put down the brush she was using to dust a frame.

'About what?'

'Where Merel was. I'm still going to tell the people concerned. Not while we're sorting photographs.'

'Sounds serious.'

'It is.'

Tessa studied her, then moved the archive box onto the table. She did not ask if Hester was certain. Hester had dreaded that question: she still needed to allow herself to believe that being certain of her own lie was enough reason to mention it.

Inside were negatives in translucent sleeves, contact prints, loose invoices and two notebooks. No hidden compartment, no painstakingly preserved evidence collection. For the exhibition Tessa had searched among boxes of weddings and school projects. She could remember the year she bought her first professional camera because her insurance had gone up.

'Here. The week of the production.'

Rows of tiny photographs filled a contact sheet. Hester recognised the panels, a pair of jeans ruined by paint, someone walking away with a hand over his face. She asked for a magnifier. Tessa slid one over, warning that it would produce no spectacular detail. These were small prints from film. A blurred figure at the edge would not acquire a clear face through determined staring.

The first strip showed Brecht with her head thrown back, laughing at something outside the picture. Paint marked her cheek. In the next she stood beside a panel, a brush across one hand and the other on her hip. Hester remembered the stance. It did not mean Brecht was angry; she often stood like that to think.

In another shot Brecht held a ruined brush up to the camera, looking extravagantly offended. Tessa laughed.

'She'd taken that from me. Returned it with half the bristles loose. Claimed it was useless before she got it.'

'Sounds familiar.'

Hester remembered an argument over a roll of ribbon. Brecht needed it to edge a costume; Hester had put it aside for tying parcels. They had taken a quarter of an hour to admit that both were too lazy to cycle to the shop. Brecht finally went, on Hester's bike, and brought back a bag of liquorice almost empty by the time she returned.

'She could be very sure her needs came first,' Hester said.

'Yes. Then she'd do you a favour afterwards as though it had nothing to do with it.' Tessa put the picture with the possibilities. 'This is one I want to show. If Robin agrees. Not every photograph has to prove she was talented. Here she's just wrecking somebody's things.'

Hester looked at the exaggerated expression. For the first time since the envelope she laughed at something about Brecht without immediately wondering whether she should. She wrote no memory down. The picture needed no explanation of the accident.

'That was the day before,' Tessa said. 'Or early on the Saturday. Hang on.'

She found her notebook. An ordinary appointment diary, with addresses, expenses and names. Sometimes Tessa had noted where a roll of film began and ended, otherwise the prints might go to the wrong client. Beside Saturday, 25 September, stood De Werf, preparation, portraits. An outside appointment had a time, and below it was a note that she had returned. Not a time for every image. She explained before Hester could ask.

'My camera didn't know afternoon from evening. This is just the order I took the pictures in. It's not a clock.'

'And this?' Hester pointed to a photograph of the yard.

Tessa turned the sheet so they could look together. On the left stood a planter, then still without plants. Beyond the open gate a man was visible, his coat halfway over his shoulder. Another man stood further along the path, partly out of frame.

Hester held the magnifier still. She recognised Ruben's coat as well as his face. He had worn it often, a frayed pale patch near the pocket. Daan's hair had been longer then. The photograph gave them no precise time, no indication of what had happened on the stairs. Two men were outside. Already more than the conversations so far had allowed.

'Are you sure about this?' she asked.

'That it's Ruben and Daan? Yes. I can see that, and I knew it then. But if you mean was this before somebody fell: I was outside, heard shouting later and went back. I didn't check my watch to record it.'

'Why have I never seen these?'

Tessa pushed forward the next print. The photographs Hester knew were larger, arranged in folders with the foundation logo. Cheerful pictures. Young people carrying timber, Marjan beside the stage, a group at the long table. All fitting a successful community project struck by an accident.

'Because these were the ones I chose.' Tessa tapped the larger prints. 'The rest weren't needed.'

'By whom?'

'For the booklet. For my portfolio. For your mother, who wanted a box of prints. And for me, because I didn't fancy endless arguments about why somebody looked gloomy.'

Hester looked at the outside photograph again. 'Did you give this to the police then?'

'They asked if I'd photographed the fall. I hadn't. I said I'd been outside. I don't think I'd printed this yet. Then the finding came through. I put the contact sheets away.'

'You knew people suspected Ruben, though.'

Tessa put down the magnifier. 'Who? Everybody who wouldn't say it aloud? Yes. And I didn't challenge it. You can hold me responsible for that. But I didn't have a picture I knew proved he couldn't possibly have been there.'

Hester heard the precision she had tried to maintain herself that morning. It was tempting to make the image more than it was, a visible answer at last to all the talk. Inventing fresh certainties about Ruben would not help him.

'Can Ellen see this?'

'Who's Ellen?'

Hester gave her name and role. Tessa thought, then asked if she could contact her directly. She did not want to hand the originals round an entire group. Hester produced the contact card. Tessa photographed the name and number. No waiting for Hester to act as intermediary.

As Tessa replaced the sleeves, a small invoice slipped to the floor. Hester picked it up. Photocopying, an amount in euros with the old VAT rate. On the back Brecht had listed materials. Cardboard, linen, spray adhesive, and beside them three little shapes Hester recognised from the panels.

'Is that hers?'

'I think so. She used to tuck paper everywhere. I left it in.'

Hester did not put it with the police contact card. It was no evidence of the fall. It was a list made by someone putting on a production who apparently lacked clean paper. That ordinariness made the name beneath yesterday's image uncomfortable. Under Marjan's guidance. As though all the work had disappeared beneath it.

Tessa asked her to help move a panel from the table to the wall. Not an original from 2004, just a trial for the display. They each took an end. Hester walked backwards and pointed with her elbow at a chair in the way. Tessa set down her end before moving it.

'Don't carry things and clear obstacles at the same time,' she said.

'I'm always telling other people that.'

'Now you can practise.'

They rested the panel on two supports. Hester checked the space from the foyer. Not enough if they put three panels in a row. They removed one. A smaller exhibition could still be a deliberate choice rather than a failure.

Tessa had to leave at two. Her next client expected image selections for a catalogue. She had thought this afternoon would mostly yield scans and nostalgia, she said, but the contact sheet would not get lost among her jobs. She called Ellen while Hester checked the lighting. Hearing only half the conversation, Hester deliberately moved on to the kitchen. Tessa could explain her material herself.

Fleur arrived with a bag of rolls and saw the trial panel. She asked where the rest would go. Hester explained the space available and the captions still needing work. Fleur took a roll as though they had finished with practical objections.

'Then we lay the hall out differently. More along the walls.'

'Not without checking the back door. And it's not just space.'

'I know. The names.'

'What we're promising, too. You're still advertising a cheerful look back.'

Fleur folded the bag closed. 'For a lot of people it was a good time.'

'That doesn't become untrue because there's more to say.'

'But that extra part takes over. It becomes the whole story. Surely you see that?'

Hester saw it too well. She had kept her statement intact for twenty-two years, thinking one correction would drag everything else down with it. Now she looked at the sketch on the invoice and no longer knew what the rest had been worth if it could exist only on those terms.

'I'm not agreeing a programme today that promises an account of Brecht's death,' she said. 'I can't deliver that and it doesn't belong here. But I'm not arranging things so everyone sees only the approved photographs either.'

'You're here to coordinate.'

'Yes. That's why I'm telling you what not to sell to visitors.'

Tessa entered the kitchen, her bag already on her shoulder. She had made contact and would show the material directly. Fleur asked whether there was an investigation now. Tessa said she was not the person to ask.

'I'm unavailable tomorrow afternoon,' she added. 'Thursday too. I can prepare the chosen images on Friday. If the wording still isn't right then, I'm not hanging any photographs.'

She took a roll and left. Hester watched until the door closed. Her departure changed something: the archive box had not become a loan anyone could help themselves to. Fleur sat at the table and opened her laptop. How long did they have to rewrite the programme?

'Not all of it now,' Hester said. 'First the catering confirmation and our agreement with Tessa in writing. Wednesday morning we finish the content.'

'That sounds very calm.'

'It's just the order we're doing things in.'

They pushed the rolls into the middle. A sheet with the seven names still lay at the end of the table. Hester took a pen from the holder. It did not write, so she chose another. Beside Tessa she wrote not photographs supplied but material with photographer, contact direct. The archive box went with Tessa when she came back for it; Hester helped tighten the strap round the lid.