‘I’ll do that. Thanks.’ I strode over and pushed through the strings of beads in the doorway.

It was a dimly lighted den, and the sole customer was a man in shabby clothes flicking through one of a set of boxes that lined the walls. As soon as he saw me he immediately left. I could hear a printing press thundering away in a back room. Behind the counter stood a young man, with little pictures tattooed on his neck in green-turning ink. He looked me slowly up and down, making me intensely uncomfortable, and wiped his mouth. ‘You looking for work?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘What, then?’

‘I want a print from a negative.’

He shrugged. ‘All right. Let’s have it.’ I handed it over. ‘How big?’

‘What’s the standard size?’

‘Whatever takes your fancy. Ten by eight’s normal. Centimetres,’ he said.

‘That’s fine. How much?’

‘Eighty pence. Payable now.’

‘Eighty pence?’

‘Very discreet service here. You pay for that.’

I reluctantly agreed. ‘A friend of mine recommended you.’

‘Oh, yes?’ he said with a chuckle.

‘Lorelei Addington.’

For a split second he stared at me. Then he smiled. ‘The actress? Don’t think we’ve had her. I’d be on some beach in the South Seas smoking fat cigars if we had. Lot of trade on that.’

I couldn’t tell if he was hiding something from me. ‘When will it be ready?’

‘Tomorrow at three.’

‘All right.’ I lifted it up. ‘Can you tell me anything about it?’

He looked bemused. ‘Like what?’

‘Anything.’

‘It’s a neg. What the fuck else is there?’

‘Sorry. No, that’s fine.’ I don’t know what I had expected him to tell me. As I pushed through the doorway, I glanced back. His expression showed an animal wariness.

27

I went down the stairs barefoot the next day, Saturday, thinking that we could make pancakes for breakfast and pretend it was Shrove Tuesday – I had a little sugar and a lemon to squeeze over them. Pondering whether I had enough powdered eggs, I heard the postwoman arriving. ‘You’re up early,’ she said, as I opened the door.

‘So are you.’

‘My job, though,’ she chuckled. ‘Sorry, looks like bills.’ She handed over two brown manila envelopes before touching her cap and leaving. I put the malignant envelopes on the little table in the hallway for Nick. He could deal with them. It was then that I noticed something was missing.

A framed photograph that my friend Sally had taken of us as we had left our wedding ceremony wasn’t in its place on the wall, even though the hook that had held it was still there. I searched around for the photograph and quickly spotted it on the floor by the coat rack. It couldn’t have just fallen, certainly not to where it was now. It was a little strange, but I didn’t think much of it.