‘Did I tell you there’s an art group I’m thinking of joining? They have photography classes. I’d love to do some of those.’ I’m not prepared to confess that it’s actually a group for people with dementia. Lydia will only pity me.
‘You take more than enough photos as it is,’ says Lydia. ‘Why would you want to learn to do something you already do all the time? Wouldn’t you be better off learning something new?’
Learning new things is hard. I’m more comfortable with the familiar. But to cover this up, I start to explain that I want to take more polished photographs, more professional ones. Lydia cuts bread to go with the soup she’s made us for lunch with an absent look on her face. I’ve probably told her about the photography group before. It’s why I start lots of sentences with ‘Did I tell you?’ I don’t want to keep repeating myself. Conversation isn’t as smooth as it used to be. I know I say the same thing more than once, and sometimes I start a sentence and I just can’t think how to bring it to an end.
There is a card attached to my fridge with a magnet. Harriet unfastens it and reads it aloud. Something about a photography group. ‘You should give this a go,’ she says. ‘Come on, Mum, you need to get out and about, meet new people, get your confidence back.’
I shake my head. But Harriet is like her birth mother, she doesn’t take no for an answer. Before I know it, she is driving me to a community centre, insisting I’ll like it once I get there.
There are eight people including me in the photography group. Seven, counting Harriet. She is hanging on to my hand as if I’ll run away unless she keeps hold of me. But it’s still good to feel her there, to feel her touch. A woman – in her fifties, I would guess – says her name is Gemma and introduces us to one another. I think she’s just conducting the group, or maybe she’s a relative, like Harriet. There is an elderly man in a grey jumper that’s been darned in places, and navy tracksuit bottoms. He is asking to look at my photographs. I open the album. The first pictures are of me and Zora when we were small. I didn’t take these, of course. Mum or Dad must have taken them. But wasn’t I the only member of the family who ever had a camera?
Me and Zora are standing together. It is our first communion. We are wearing the same long white dresses, like brides. We are trying to look holy even though Cal is doing his best to make us laugh by pulling silly faces. I ask Zora if trying to stop people being holy is a sin. She is cross. She says of course it isn’t, Cal’s just having fun and God doesn’t mind.
God seems to mind a lot of things, like kissing boys and not going to church on Sundays. I go to church quite a lot and Zora thinks it’s because I’m a true believer, but the thing I want to believe most is that the world is safe and not utterly cruel. I worry that Lydia is right when she says God doesn’t exist. Starving children in Africa and India pray to God to give them food to eat but nothing happens. They’re on television all the time with swollen bellies and large, hopeless eyes. God only seems to listen to white children. I say some of this to Father John in the confessional. He says God works in mysterious ways. He’s certainly right about that. I keep going back to confession in the hope that Father John’s answers will be better and I’ll feel safer about everything but they never are. He says that God isn’t responsible for all the cruelty, man is responsible, and man has free will. ‘You have to have faith,’ he says. ‘It’s arrogant to question your faith like this and think you know better than the Pope and all the holy nuns and priests. Pray to God to give you some humility.’
I do my best to pray for this, but it’s hard.
When I made my first communion I prayed to God to give me a camera. When it didn’t fall from the sky and onto my bed one morning, I waited a while. Then I wrote a letter to Father Christmas with the same request, and this got me the result I’d been hoping for. I took a lot of pictures.
‘Show us the next photograph,’ says Harriet.
The next picture is of Lydia. She is in shorts and there are leaves on the trees so it must be summer. She is drinking from a bottle of pop and wearing sunglasses. There is a boy beside her, also wearing shorts and sunglasses. They are stretched out on the grass side by side. Zora is just visible on the very edge of the photograph but it isn’t possible to see her face.
‘Who’s she?’ asks darned-jumper man.
‘That’s Lydia,’ I reply.
‘Who is the boy?’ asks… Emma?
I stare at the photograph and try to remember. He looks a bit like Lydia. Did she have a brother? ‘I don’t know who he is,’ I tell her, and then I add, to cover the gap in my memory, ‘I used to go to school with Lydia.’
‘That must be Adam,’ says Harriet. ‘How old are you all here?’
I try to work it out. ‘Eight? Nine?’ I remember Adam. He was probably ten or eleven. He was older than us.
‘Is that the Common?’ darned-jumper man asks.
‘It’s Wandsworth Common, isn’t it?’ says Emma. ‘There’s a railway track.’
I can’t see a railway track. Did Zora and I go to Wandsworth Common with Lydia once? I can’t remember now.
Lydia is standing by a long window. Her husband… Michael?… has been for a run on the Common and he is taking a shower, I can hear the water running. Everything is open-plan in this apartment. There are big, coloured statue things that glisten in the sunlight; I like to run my fingers along their smooth edges. All the rooms are on the ground floor, including the two big bathrooms, and there are no doors, just sort of cubicles. Even the bedrooms are like very big cubicles. I prefer old houses with proper doors you can shut. But perhaps I’m just not keeping up. The world has changed and everything is almost bare of homely things. Lydia obviously likes the modern look. She is old now but she is still recognisable as the girl I used to know. Her face has a few lines but mostly her skin is smooth. I don’t think I’m recognisable as the girl I once was. I look at Lydia again. Her face is almost perfect even though she is old. There is something I want to ask her. I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t remember what it is I want to say.
‘What were you going to say?’ asks Harriet as I close the book of photographs.
‘I’m not sure,’ I answer. I think it was something about Lydia, but the words have slipped away from me.