Val went back to the first five pictures and looked at them again. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, with different parts clear in each shot. Two slender figures posing against a tall fence. The exterior of a white-painted house. Girls in white dresses. Here and there she could make out shoulder-length hair, a round face, a high-necked blouse, and she got the impression the girls were pretty. Were they her father’s sisters, and therefore her aunts? Were any of them still alive? None of the figures she could make out resembled either her father or her mother, and that was disappointing.

“I’m sorry they’re not clearer,” Alan said, “but this is pretty good for film that’s over fifty years old.”

“It’s better than I expected,” Val said, biting her lip. “I wonder if I might have copies of the prints?”

“Of course,” he said, straightaway. “I made a set of six-by-fours, and you can take the enlarged ones as well if you like.”

“Are you sure I can’t pay you anything?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “I love a challenge.”

When Val got home, she flicked through the prints again but couldn’t make out any more than she had in the darkroom. She got a creepy feeling from them, and decided to hide them on the shelf behind her dressing table, where Tony wouldn’t find them. It was a safe bet he wouldn’t approve.

Chapter 12

Sydney, January 1974

TWO MONTHS AFTER VAL’S FATHER’S DEATH, HIS HOUSE was empty, the rooms looking huge without furniture, the wallpaper marked with ghostly rectangles where pictures used to hang. As soon as Tony put it on the market, it was snapped up by a property developer with plans to renovate and extend it, adding a pool out back. Val was relieved she no longer had to make the daily commute to Bondi, but still her depression wouldn’t shift.

“Maybe you should go to the doctor and get a prescription for Valium,” Peggy suggested over cream soda drinks in her yard, while Nicole played with her son, Lenny, in their sandbox. “A mate of mine, Lynette, says it worked for her.”

Val screwed up her nose. “I don’t like the idea of taking pills. Tony says it’s mind over matter and I should be able to snap out of it.”

Peggy snorted, expressing her opinion of Tony. “Maybe if he gave you a bit more support . . . or took you out for dinner some night instead of expecting a slap-up meal on the table . . . Mind over matter indeed!”