Kit: The Things a Photograph Cannot Do

The print shop was behind a hardware store, down a passage lined with empty delivery crates. A sign on the door said KNOCK LOUDLY. Nell knocked as though she were apologising to the wood.

“Louder,” I said.

“I don't want to seem aggressive.”

“The sign has authorised you.”

She knocked again. A woman opened the door carrying a stack of paper against her chest.

“You'll be the guide people,” she said.

Her name was Fran. She had ink on one wrist and no patience for vague descriptions of paper as nice. She wanted us to feel the samples, fold them, hold them under the light and decide what we could afford.

Nell chose a sheet, then immediately asked whether it was the expensive one.

“It is,” Fran said.

“Of course it is.”

We found an acceptable stock that wasn't. Fran showed us the test cover. The single accent colour made the title stand out without turning the whole thing into a festival advertisement. Inside, the photographs looked better than they had on the office printer, but one still needed work.

It was the image of Nell laughing under the cinema canopy.

I had included it because it showed the point of the failed outing: an afternoon could be worth keeping even when the planned activity didn't happen. It also showed how I had looked at her before we kissed. That was harder to separate now.

Fran pointed to the shadow on the page. “This area will fill in. You'll lose the face.”

“I can adjust it,” I said.

Nell looked at the photograph and then at me.

“We don't have to use that one.”

“I know.”

“I mean for the guide. Not because—”

“I know what you mean.”

Fran tactfully became fascinated by the binding machine.

We took the proof to the café next door. Nell ordered a sandwich. I ordered soup, which made looking at paper considerably more dangerous.

I put the photograph between us.

“It isn't working in the sequence,” I said.

“You can take it out.”

“You don't mind?”

“It's your photograph. And it's not the only way to show the outing.”

We chose an image of the empty screen and the wet chairs instead. It was less charming, more useful. Nell wrote a caption explaining that the screening had been cancelled and that readers should check the current programme before going. The page stopped pretending a failed event could be represented entirely by two people laughing attractively in the rain.

I saved the other photograph in a private folder.

After lunch, we walked back through Market Lane. The shop where I'd bought the tie had changed its window display. A mannequin now wore a wedding dress, a cycling helmet and a handbag shaped like a strawberry. Nell stopped dead.

“That is a complete character,” she said.

I laughed.

“No photograph?” she asked.

“Not everything needs one.”

She glanced at me. “You're allowed to say that?”

“Professional discretion.”

We stood looking at the mannequin while people moved around us. I realised I wanted to tell her about the room paperwork, about Dad pretending not to be worried by the first payment, about Asha asking whether I'd work on another sound piece. I had been telling her some of these things in careful fragments. I wanted the whole ordinary conversation back.

“I've missed you,” I said.

Her expression changed.

“I've been here.”

“I know.”

She looked down at the pavement. “I've missed you too.”

“I haven't decided everything.”

“You don't have to.”

“But I don't want to keep pretending every time I want to talk to you is an error in judgement.”

She nodded. Her eyes were bright, and she looked annoyed with them.

“Would you like to walk somewhere after we drop off the proof?” I asked.

“For the guide?”

“No.”

This time I said it before she had to make a joke.

We walked to the seafront. We didn't hold hands at first. I told her about the sound piece. She told me Taz had been practising accents while carrying onions, which had alarmed a neighbour. We bought nothing, tested nothing and did not count the steps.

At the quieter end of the promenade, Nell stopped beside the railings.

“I don't want to promise I won't ever be selfish again,” she said. “I think that would be another flattering version.”

“I'd be suspicious.”

“But I can promise not to make it your job to catch me.”

I looked at her for a long moment.

Then I took her hand.

It wasn't the same as the picnic. There was less surprise and more knowledge. I could feel the memory of being hurt without finding that it occupied all the space between us.

“Slowly,” I said.

“Yes.”

She squeezed my fingers once. We kept walking.

When we reached her street, I kissed her. Briefly, deliberately, with enough room afterwards to see that she wasn't treating it as the erasure of everything before it.

She smiled, then rested her forehead against mine.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello.”

It was a smaller beginning than the first one. I trusted its size.