Gold Under Black

Imani's contact sheets were pinned to the drying board with wooden pegs. Under the strip light, the fundraiser looked like a different kind of evening: too many people, too much cake, a microphone cable somebody would eventually trip over. Rowan appeared near the end of the second sheet with half a crisp in his mouth.

“I hadn't noticed that one,” I said.

“I wasn't going to show his mum without asking.”

“She might like it.”

“She might.”

Imani slid another peg along the top of the board. “People don't all want the same photographs.”

She had asked me to come to the darkroom because she wanted a second opinion on three bus photographs for her own submission. We were fifteen minutes into looking at Friday instead. I knew whose fault that was.

“Sorry,” I said. “Show me the buses.”

She raised an eyebrow, then took three large prints from a sleeve.

The first showed her father at the end of a row of seats, his hand on the back of one of them. In the second he was outside, seen through the windscreen with the depot lights behind him. The third showed no person at all. Just the driver's jacket hanging over the wheel and a pale, crushed crescent where somebody had left a sandwich wrapper on the dashboard.

“I like the third,” I said.

“Why?”

“It feels like he was there before the photograph and will be there after.”

“That is unusually close to what I was trying to do.”

“I have moments.”

“He hates it. He says people will think he leaves rubbish in his cab.”

“Does he?”

“It was my sandwich.”

We stood looking at the jacket. I liked that the photograph made no effort to be beautiful in a tidy way. There was a smear on the glass and a row of buttons worn almost blank. It looked like work, and like a place somebody knew with their body.

“Can you say in the caption that it's your wrapper?”

“I could title it Daughter Makes Mess, Father Gets Blamed.”

“Very traditional subject.”

She laughed, and I felt how much I had missed making her laugh without first having to say something difficult.

While she wrote a note on the back of the print sleeve, I looked again at the contact sheets.

Finn was in four frames beside the donation table. In the first he was turning towards Councillor Tarrant, his right hand raised at chest height. In the next two he was carrying the same display board. In the fourth he had moved close to the camera, one arm stretched past Imani to shift a chair.

His wrist caught the light.

“Can I ask about one of these?” I said.

Imani followed my finger.

“The band?”

“Yes.”

“I saw it yesterday. I sent a note with the frame numbers.”

“To the police?”

“Yes. They already had the files, but I didn't know whether anybody had looked at that bit.”

I felt briefly left behind. It was a ridiculous reaction. Imani was not collecting things for me. We had already had that conversation, and still some small part of me expected information to pass through my hands first.

“Can you show me?” I asked.

She studied my face, perhaps checking whether I had understood the difference between the two questions, then turned to the computer.

The first frame filled the screen. Finn's wristband was gold, printed with the Lantern Rooms logo and a little black star. I had worn a plain black one. Sam's had been orange. At the fundraiser, those colours had seemed like mildly irritating administration. Gold meant a donor, a board guest, or someone expected to use the office and backstage corridor without being stopped every time. It had also meant Clare could collect a drink without finding her purse.

“Was he meant to have gold?” I asked.

“His mum handed him one when I was setting up. There was a strip of them on the office table.”

“Not exactly secure.”

“No.”

In the later photograph, taken after the band had begun, Finn was clapping. A black band covered most of the gold one, but a shining triangle had folded out near the fastening.

“Could he just have put another one on?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

She zoomed out before I could lean any closer.

“That's as far as the detail goes,” she said. “It isn't going to become clearer because we want it to.”

“I know.”

“I know you know. You keep moving towards the screen anyway.”

I sat back.

On the contact sheet, the black band disappeared into the shadow of his cuff. Only the digital file showed the gold corner. It was not a revelation of his face at the service gate. It was a thing he had changed during an evening when he said he had stayed with the audience.

“Do you know when the first one was taken?”

“Before Tarrant's speech. He's holding his cards in the next frame. I thought I'd set my camera clock right before the event, but when I checked again while packing it looked about four minutes slow, so the display time isn't reliable.”

“Four minutes exactly?”

“Approximately. I photographed the hall clock while I was packing, but that doesn't mean the hall clock was right. I've explained it. The order is solid. The exact minute needs other things.”

She showed me the sequence without skipping. Finn beside Tarrant. A volunteer passing a bowl of raffle tickets. Rowan lifting a display board. Judith reaching under the table. Then the stage, then a row of people turning because somebody behind them had laughed.

The later photograph was well into the first song. I recognised the guitarist's broken strap, which she had fixed with a strip of cloth after the first chorus.

“Did you see Finn in the break?” I asked.

“Not that I can remember. I was outside for part of it. Then I went round to get batteries from my bag.”

“By the office?”

“Yes. Bea, I've told them where I went.”

“Sorry.”

She folded her arms.

“I don't mind you asking. I mind feeling like there's a right answer.”

I looked at the screen again. The little triangle of gold was still there, perfectly indifferent to what we made of it.

“He told me he hadn't been back through the service door after the speeches,” I said. “On Saturday. I don't know if he said the same thing to them.”

“Then tell them that. Separately from what the photographs show.”

We wrote it down that way: one note about the images, one about my memory of Finn's words. I did not try to make the wristband say where he had been.

When Imani closed the folder, a picture appeared underneath from another session. She was sitting on a kitchen counter beside a woman with the same cheekbones and a much less patient expression. Both of them wore flour on their faces.

“Your mum?”

“My aunt. She was teaching me pastry.”

“Successfully?”

“We made a container for jam. Whether it was a tart is still disputed.”

She closed that picture too, but not quickly enough to suggest I should not have seen it.

“Can I ask you something that isn't about Friday?” I said.

“Please.”

“Are you still looking at Manchester?”

“Yes. And Leeds. Dad thinks I should stay close enough to come home when I need washing done.”

“What do you think?”

“I think I know how a washing machine works.”

“That wasn't what I meant.”

“I know.”

She took the three bus prints and laid them side by side on the table.

“I want to go somewhere where I don't already know what people expect me to make,” she said. “But I like knowing where I am. Both things are annoying.”

I nodded. The idea of her leaving hurt in a way I did not feel entitled to mention. We had kissed zero times. We had spent more time discussing my bad decisions than almost anything else. It was too early to miss a person who had not gone anywhere.

“Do you want help carrying those?” I asked.

“They weigh about the same as six pieces of paper.”

“I could carry them very professionally.”

She handed me the empty sleeve.

“Start with this.”

Outside, the college doors had been propped open with a bin. Warm air came in from the car park. Somebody was playing a song on a phone, badly distorted, and two first-years were arguing about whose turn it was to buy chips.

Imani stopped beside the noticeboard.

“Dad finishes at eight tomorrow,” she said. “I want to make one more photograph. You could come. If you can manage half an hour of it not being about the centre.”

“I can.”

She looked at me.

“I'll try very hard,” I said.

“Better.”

We walked down the steps together. At the gate she took the sleeve back, and her fingers touched mine long enough for me to notice, not long enough for me to know whether I was meant to.

My phone rang before I could say anything useful.

It was Val.

“I've remembered about that jacket,” he said. “But I don't want you making me more certain than I am.”