1
Seraphine
August 2017
WE HAVE NOphotographs of our early days, Danny and I. A six-month gap yawns in the Mayes family album after we were born. No first-day-at-school pictures for Edwin, no means of telling which of us two looked more like him at the beginning. An empty double page marks the overwhelming grief that followed our arrival.
It’s a muggy evening at Summerbourne, and the unopened window in the study muffles the distant rasp of the sea and leaves my skin clammy. I’ve spent the day creating paperwork towers that cluster around the shredder now, their elongated shadows reminding me of the graveyard. If Edwin has finished his packing, he’ll be waiting for me downstairs; he disapproves of me doing this so soon, or perhaps disapproves of me doing it at all.
The swivel chair tilts with me as I grab another photo wallet from the bottom desk drawer—more landscape shots of my father’s, I expect—and I focus on the wall calendar as Istraighten, counting red-rimmed squares. Twenty days since my father’s accident. Eight days since his funeral. The packet flaps open and spills glossy black negatives across the carpet, and my jaw tightens. I’ve lost count of how many days since I last slept.
The first photo is of Edwin on the beach as a child, and I check the date on the back: June 1992, just weeks before Danny and I were born. I study this four-year-old version of my big brother for any sign of awareness of the family catastrophe that was looming, but of course there is none: he’s laughing, squinting against the bright sunlight, pointing a plastic spade toward a dark-haired young woman at the edge of the image.
Photos of seagulls and sunsets follow, and I shuffle through them until I reach the final picture: a domestic scene both recognizable and unfamiliar. The hairs at the base of my skull prickle, and I hold my breath, and the air in the room presses closer, as if it too is straining to absorb the details.
We grew up with no photos of our early days, Danny and I. Yet here is our mother, sitting on the patio at Summerbourne, her face tilted down toward a swaddled baby cradled in her arms. Here is our father, standing on one side of her, young Edwin on the other side, both beaming proudly at the camera.
I bend closer over the image: my mother, before she left us. The details of her expression are hazy, the picture poorly focused, yet she radiates a calm composure from the neatness of her hair, the angle of her cheek, the curve of her body around the single infant. She shows none of the wild-eyed distress that has always haunted my imagination in the absence of anyone willing to describe her final hours to me.
I flip the photo over, and my father’s distinctive scrawl confirms it was taken on the day we were born, just over twenty-five years ago. I already know it could be no later, because onthe same day Danny and I were born, our mother jumped from the cliffs behind our house and killed herself.
My bare feet make no noise on the stairs.
A duffel bag lurks by the hall table, snagging at my dressing gown as I sweep past. I find Edwin leaning against the wooden countertop in the unlit kitchen, gazing through the wide glass doors toward the shadows in the garden.
“Look at this.” I flick on the lights. “I’ve never seen this before.”
He takes the picture, blinking.
“Me neither,” he says. He studies it. “The day you were born. I didn’t know we had this, but... yeah, I think I remember it being taken.” It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile in days. “Dad looks so young. Look at that. Mum looks so...”
“Happy,” I say.
“Yeah.” His tone is soft; his attention absorbed in the picture.
“Not like someone who’s about to commit suicide.”
His smile fades.
I twitch the picture from his fingers and scrutinize it. “Why’s she only holding one of us? Is it me or Danny?”
“I’ve no idea. What’s this one?” Edwin reaches for the other photo I brought down—him laughing on the beach with the dark-haired teenager. “Oh, this was Laura. I remember her. She was nice.”
“Your au pair?” I ask. Now that he says her name, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her in the family photo album. The young woman who looked after Edwin in those carefree days before we were born, when he still had a mother and no need of the full-time roster of nannies that Danny and I grew up with.
“She’s the one who took this,” Edwin says, reaching againfor the photo of our mother holding the single baby, but I keep my grip on it and take it with me to the kitchen table. I drop onto a chair and straighten the picture in front of me, smoothing a curled corner with my thumb.
“It’s odd,” I say. “It’s staged, like you were marking the occasion. You’d think they’d have made sure both of us were in it.”
Edwin shakes his head. “I don’t know. I guess—there was other stuff going on we don’t know about.”
“But Mum looks so calm here.” I frown at the picture. “I know—I doknowwhy we never had any baby photos. Everyone in shock after Mum died. But I can’t believe—I’ve finally found one—and I don’t even know if it’s me or Danny in it.”
“Here,” Edwin says. “I’ll take it—I’ll ask Gran about it.” He reaches for it again, but I press my thumb more firmly onto the corner.
“Gran never wants to talk about these things,” I say. “No one ever does.”
Edwin sighs. “You need to get some sleep, Seph—do you want to try one of Gran’s pills? Maybe get dressed tomorrow, go out for a walk or something.” He rubs his eyes briefly. “Things will get easier, you know.”
