A few minutes after seeing the shot below, I thought of a scene in my book Hometown that could have been inspired by the photo. As I don't remember the photo, it wasn't. But yeah, I think maybe it was. Because something in me remembered.
She pulled the album free and
let it fall open to a double page spread of pictures. At once, grief filled her
just as joy did.
‘Geri,’ she whispered and
traced her fingertip over Geri’s smile and her face. The shot was from a night
in a pub, probably around the time she and Andy had left for university. In the
photo, Geri was smiling and lifting a drink to her mouth, Mick beside her with
two fingers held up to the camera and his tongue sticking out. In the photo
beside it, Mick had lowered his hand, Geri’s drink was at her mouth and not
quite obscuring her smile as Mick kissed her cheek.
Karen’s tears pattered on the
picture and she let them fall, smiling as she studied the other photos. They
didn’t appear to be in any order. Shots of their late teen years sat with older
shots of Geri and her family when she’d been twelve or so, then shots from
university life. Karen turned the page to photos of childhood pets: a large
black and white cat, one ear tucked under his head and a paw reaching towards
the camera; a border collie pup chasing a ball in the garden. She turned the
page again and her gaze immediately fell on a photo in the top right.
It was all of them. She sat
beside Geri on a school table. Stu was on Geri’s other side, Mick beside him,
and Will in front of Geri, her hand on his shoulder with Andy squeezing into
frame beside Will.
Others had crammed into the
shot and while she could name all of them, she knew they weren’t part of the
photo in the same way she, Geri and the boys were. Maybe they knew it, too. A
few were smiling, but most were looking out of shot or at each other. She
touched Geri’s hand on Will’s shoulder and there was no jealousy. Seeing them
together in such a perfect moment was exactly as it should be.
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