‘Uh-huh,’ Will says, detecting also the twin-tone of a train horn. It must be coming from the line along the seafront, the entire breadth of the town away.

It feels like being shaken awake when Will flicks the lights back on. ‘All done,’ he says, pouring the fixer down the sink and rinsing the negatives. He cuts the film into strips, interested right now just in the shots April took of the bird taking flight into the sun. Crouching with his chin on her shoulder, he offers them up to the light.

‘That one, I think,’ April says, pointing to a shot where the feathered lower edge of the wing seems to rise from the sea and slice right into the dazzling sun.

‘Agreed. It’s a beaut,’ Will says. ‘Let’s run a print.’

The lights are switched off again, but this time the room is lit by the amber glow of the safe lamp as Will walks April through the printing process, evangelizing its merits over digital printing.

Ignored in a plastic sleeve is the rest of the film. It is shortly to be tossed into Will’s rucksack and given no more attention. Which is a shame. Because enthuse as Will might about film photography, there is another advantage it has over digital imaging that he’s not aware of. Like music, there are things in nature that cannot be reduced to a series of zeros and ones. The natural world is very much analogue, billions of shades of grey. Never just one thing or another. Not even the things that appear to be absolutely binary. Life and death being just one example.

That accidental photograph Will took an hour ago, of the empty space behind him that seemed so fascinating to the egret. A digital image wouldn’t have caught anything. But Will’s camera did. It’s a shame that in his haste to run a print, Will hasn’t scrutinized that particular negative up close.

Because it might begin to shed a little light on what’s been going on recently.

Last Lesson

‘Well, we’ve made it to half-term,’ Ms Calloway says, ‘without losing a single student from the course. Almost unheard of. And, what’s more, you have some photographs for my delectation.’

It’s the last period of Friday afternoon. Will and April occupy the centre two seats in an arc, Alfie and Kris Tring to either side of them. Will snatched twenty minutes of sleep in physics earlier, but still there is a cotton-wool quietness about everything. Their all-nighter appears to have had no effect on April, however, who bounces from her seat, thrusting their print into Ms Calloway’s hand. She considers it, smiling and raising her eyebrows.

‘The homework, yes,’ Alfie says, popping the cap off a cardboard tube. ‘Just a little something I snapped.’ He passes a rolled poster forward.

‘There’s been a bit of a … delay,’ Kris Tring mumbles.