37.

–What do you mean they’re not here? I dropped the camera in two hours ago. It’s a one-hour service.

–I’m sorry, Madam, I can’t find anything under that name.

–Hanwell, Leah. Please check again.

Leah puts both hands on the pharmacy counter.

–Are you sure it was today?

–I don’t understand. Are you saying you’ve lost them? I was in two hours ago. Today. Monday. A man served me.

–I have no record of the name you’re giving me. I just got here, Madam. Do you know who was serving you? Was it a young man or an older gentleman?

–I don’t remember who served me. I know I came in here.

–Madam, there’s another pharmacy at the station, are you sure it wasn’t that one?

–Yes I’m sure. Hanwell, Leah. Can you look again?

A queue forms behind her. They are trying to decide if she is crazy. Sectioning is a common procedure in NW, and it is not always the people you’d think. The Indian woman in the white coat behind the counter flicks once more through her box of yellow envelopes.

–Ah—Hanwell. It was not in H. It’s been put in the wrong place, you see. I’m so sorry, Madam.

She is not crazy. Photographs. Easy to forget about real photographs, their gloss and pleasure. But the first is entirely black, and so is the second; the third shows only a red aura, like a torch held beneath a sheet.

–Look, these aren’t mine, I don’t want these—

The fourth is Shar. Unmistakable. Shar laughing at whoever is taking the picture, pressing herself against a door, holding a little bottle of something, vodka? Underneath a dartboard. No other furniture in the filthy room. The fifth is Shar, still laughing, now sat on the floor, looking destroyed. The sixth is a skaggy redhead, skin and bone and track marks, with a fag hanging out her mouth, and if you squinted—

–I’m sorry, Madam. Let me take those, somehow we’ve had a mixing up.

Michel, who has been looking at shaving creams, comes over. He is not surprised. Infuriating, this perverse refusal to be either amazed or surprised.

NW, a small place.

With two pharmacies.

Photographs get mixed up.

Sounds reasonable but she can’t take it reasonably. She is enraged by the possibility that he does not believe her. This is the girl! Don’t you believe me? That’s an insane coincidence! Her photos are in my envelope! Don’t you believe me? But why should he believe her when she has lied about everything? The queue shuffles impatiently. She is shouting, and people look at her like she is mad. Michel yanks her toward the exit, the little bell over the door rings, it is all over so quickly. It is somehow the brevity of it that muddles things—those too few seconds, in which she looked and saw what was there. The girl. Her photos. My envelope. That’s what happened. Like a riddle in a dream. There is no answer. Nor is there any way that she can take back what she has so loudly proclaimed, in front of all these decent local people, or to ask to see photos that are clearly not hers, again. What would people think?