The Photograph

The photograph had hung on the wall above the kitchen table for the entirety of Elin's life.

It had hung there in the kitchen of the cottage in Carmarthenshire when Elin had been small. It had hung there in the kitchen of the terrace in Cardiff when Elin had been a teenager. It had hung there in the kitchen of the bungalow in Tenby that her mother had moved into the year Elin had finished her A-levels, and it had hung there, on the small slightly-too-pale rectangle of wallpaper where the photograph had clearly been for some time, in the kitchen of the bungalow in Tenby on the morning, three days after her mother's funeral, on which Elin had finally taken the photograph down.

The photograph was a black-and-white square print, perhaps four inches by four, mounted in a thin walnut frame her mother had bought, years ago, from a stall at Cardiff Market.

The photograph showed two girls.

They were perhaps seventeen. They were standing side by side in front of a stone wall — the kind of stone wall Elin had grown up seeing on the back roads of Carmarthenshire — and they were both wearing the same dress. The dress was a plain summer cotton, cut at the knee, dark on top and lighter below. Both girls had their hair in the same loose braid, slung over the left shoulder. Both girls were looking very slightly past the camera, in the way people do in photographs taken by a third person who has said just look natural, and both girls had, at the corner of the mouth, the same small crooked half-smile that Elin had inherited from her mother and had spent her adolescence trying to teach her own mouth out of.

The girl on the left was Elin's mother.

Elin had known the girl on the left was Elin's mother her entire life.

The girl on the right was a stranger.

—

Elin took the photograph off the wall, on the Thursday morning three days after her mother's funeral, because the executor — a small precise solicitor in Tenby called Mr Vaughan — had told her, very gently, on the telephone the previous evening, that she should photograph the contents of the kitchen, in their existing positions, before she began to clear them, because it would be a kindness, in the longer run, to herself, dear.

Elin had agreed.

Elin had agreed to most things Mr Vaughan had told her, in the three days since her mother had died, because Elin had not yet, in any of those three days, found the part of herself that was able to disagree.

She had photographed the contents of the kitchen.

She had photographed the kettle. She had photographed the small green plate. She had photographed the wedding china set out on the dresser. She had photographed the small enamel hook by the door from which her mother had hung the dog's lead for sixteen years, even after the dog had died. She had photographed the four magnets on the fridge — the three that were just souvenir magnets and the fourth that was, for a reason Elin had never understood, a postcard-sized image of a heron, glued to a magnet, that had been on the fridge of every house her mother had ever lived in.

She had photographed the photograph on the wall above the kitchen table, last.

She had photographed it with her phone, and then — because something in the photographing of it, the way the kitchen light fell across the glass, had made her look at the photograph properly for the first time in perhaps eight or nine years — she had taken it down off the wall, and she had carried it over to the small square of morning light at the kitchen window, and she had looked, with her phone in her left hand and the photograph in her right hand, at the girl on the right.

Elin had been thirty-three years old that morning.

For thirty-three years, in three kitchens, the girl on the right had hung above the table at which Elin had eaten Sunday lunch, opened her A-level results, told her mother that she had got into university, told her mother she had broken up with the boy in second year, told her mother that the woman she lived with in Cardiff was not just a flatmate, Mam, and told her mother — in the bungalow in Tenby, eight months and four days ago — that she was leaving the woman in Cardiff and was going to be coming home for a while, in the way Elin had spent most of her adult life thinking she would never have occasion to.

For thirty-three years, in three kitchens, the girl on the right had hung above all of those conversations.

For thirty-three years, in three kitchens, Elin had not, once, asked her mother who the girl on the right was.

—

Elin sat down at the kitchen table of her mother's bungalow in Tenby with the walnut-framed photograph in front of her, and she looked at the girl on the right, and she thought, in the very orderly way she had been taught by her mother to think about things she did not want to think about, Mam never told me. I never asked.

And then she thought, in a smaller voice that was not quite the orderly voice, I never asked because I knew not to.

She did not, even now, know how she had known not to.

The photograph carried no marking on the back. Elin had turned it over and confirmed this in the first thirty seconds of taking it off the wall. The frame had not been opened in a long time — the small brass tabs at the back had been bent down flush, by a hand that had bent them down with care, and Elin had not, even now, lifted the small brass tabs. The thing in the frame was the print itself, and the small folded square of acid-free tissue between the print and the back of the frame, and that was all.

There was no caption.

There was no date.

There was no name.

The girl on the right was the same height as Elin's mother. The girl on the right was the same build as Elin's mother. The girl on the right wore the same plain summer cotton dress as Elin's mother, the same loose left-shoulder braid, the same crooked half-smile. The girl on the right was not, on any of the points of resemblance Elin's eye had been trained by her own face in the mirror for thirty-three years to register —

— she was not Elin's mother's sister.

Elin's mother had not had a sister. Elin had grown up the only grandchild on her mother's side. Her grandmother had been an only child. Her great-grandmother had been an only child. The thinness of Elin's mother's family tree had been a thing Elin's mother had occasionally remarked upon in the kitchens of all three houses, with a quietness Elin had taken to be the resigned quietness of a woman who would have liked to have had more family than she'd had, and which now, in the small square of morning light at the bungalow window with the photograph in front of her, Elin allowed herself to consider might have been a slightly different quietness.

The girl on the right was not Elin's mother's cousin. Elin's mother's only cousin, Glenys, had been forty when this photograph had been taken — the photograph was sometime in the mid-1960s by the cut of the dress — and Glenys had been six foot one and had had red hair and had never, in any photograph that survived, looked anything like Elin's mother.

The girl on the right was not Elin's mother's friend Mair. Elin had grown up on the stories of Mair. Elin knew, from the framed school photograph that had been on the dresser in three kitchens, what Mair had looked like at seventeen, and Mair had had a long thin face and a fringe.

The girl on the right was wearing Elin's mother's dress. The girl on the right was wearing Elin's mother's braid. The girl on the right was wearing Elin's mother's half-smile.

The girl on the right was, in every way Elin could see, Elin's mother.

There were two of them.

—

The doorbell rang at twenty past ten.

Elin had been sitting at the kitchen table with the photograph in front of her and her phone face-down on the cloth beside it, very still, for, by her own later reckoning, perhaps thirty-five minutes. She had not got up. She had not turned the kettle on. She had not, since she had set the photograph down on the table, looked away from it.

The doorbell rang.

It rang in the brisk two-tone manner of a stranger who had never visited this house before and did not know whether the bell was a two-press or a single-press bell. Elin's mother's bell had been, in the way of bungalows in Tenby, a single-press.

Elin got up.

She left the photograph on the table, face-up.

She walked down the small hall of her mother's bungalow, past the dog's lead still hanging from the small enamel hook by the door, and she opened the front door.

The woman on the front step was perhaps sixty-five.

She was thin. She was dressed in a navy wool coat, single-breasted, and a small dark grey scarf. She wore no make-up. Her hair was iron grey, pinned back from her forehead with the same kind of black grip Elin's mother had pinned back her own iron-grey hair with for the last decade. She was holding, in her right hand, a small leather handbag that had been her mother's. Elin recognised the handbag instantly, because the handbag had a small chip out of the brass clasp at the corner, the chip Elin had made when she was eleven by dropping the handbag down the stairs in Cardiff.

The handbag was Elin's mother's handbag.

The handbag had been Elin's mother's handbag from 1989, when Elin's mother had bought it from a leather shop in Swansea, to last Tuesday afternoon, when Mr Vaughan and Elin had jointly inventoried the contents of the bungalow in Tenby and had ticked the handbag off the list, in the spare room, on its hook on the inside of the door.

The handbag was not on the hook on the inside of the door of the spare room of the bungalow in Tenby.

The handbag was in the right hand of the woman standing on the front step.

Elin looked at the handbag.

Elin looked at the woman.

The woman, with the iron-grey hair pinned back at the forehead and the same crooked half-smile that Elin had been taught by her own mirror to be wary of for thirty-three years, said, in a soft Carmarthenshire voice that was not Elin's mother's voice but was, in the way of two voices that had grown up in the same kitchen for the first eighteen years of their lives, very nearly,

'Hello, Elin. You won't know me, dear. I'm afraid I'm here for a rather difficult reason.'

She paused.

She added, very gently,

'I'm afraid I'm your mother's sister.'

—

Elin stood in the doorway of her mother's bungalow in Tenby with one hand on the door frame, and her mother's sister stood on the front step, and a thrush in the garden of the bungalow opposite — a thrush that had been singing for the entirety of the morning Elin had been photographing the kitchen — stopped, very abruptly, singing.

Elin said, in the orderly voice she had been taught by her mother to use for things she did not, at first, know how to take, 'My mother did not have a sister.'

The woman said, very gently, 'No, dear. She did not, in the way you would have meant that. She did, in another way. Mr Vaughan was supposed to have told you this on Tuesday. He didn't. I had to ring him this morning. He has been, between us, since 1971, the only person who has known. He has handled it very well, in his way. He is not, I think, having a good week.'

Elin said, 'Mr Vaughan rang me yesterday evening. He said nothing.'

The woman said, 'No, dear. I asked him not to. I wanted to be the one. May I come in.'

Elin did not, immediately, let her in.

Elin said, with one hand still on the door frame, in the voice of a woman who had been taught by her mother to ask the question very precisely so the answer could not slide around it,

'I am sorry. Could you tell me. The handbag. The handbag in your right hand. The handbag was in the spare room of this house on Tuesday afternoon. I was here when Mr Vaughan inventoried it. I locked the front door of this house on Tuesday afternoon and I opened the front door of this house this morning and the handbag was not in the spare room when I came down to the kitchen this morning. How is the handbag in your right hand.'

The woman, with the handbag in her right hand, looked at Elin for a long beat.

The woman said, very quietly, 'Because I have a key, dear. Your mother gave me a key to this house in 2009, the year she bought it. She gave me a key to the previous one too, the one in Cardiff, in 1998. She gave me a key to every house she ever lived in from 1971 to the morning she died. I have a drawer of keys, at home in Llandeilo, that I have not been allowed to use, dear, until this week. I'm so sorry — but I came in last night, after you were asleep, and I sat in your mother's kitchen, and I took back the handbag I gave her in Swansea in 1989. I'm sorry to have done it without speaking to you first. I needed it for this morning. I needed the cards inside it. I needed the cards because Mr Vaughan, when he reads the will in his office at four o'clock this afternoon, will read a version of it that I am required to confirm in person, with proof of identity, and the proofs of my identity have, since 1971, been in your mother's handbag — because they are also, in a sense the law has had some difficulty arranging itself around, your mother's. Are you going to let me in.'

—

Elin let her in.

She did not, at first, say anything else.

She walked the woman into the kitchen of her mother's bungalow in Tenby, where the walnut-framed photograph sat on the kitchen table, face-up in the small square of morning light, and the woman saw the photograph as she came into the room, and the woman stopped — with the leather handbag still in her right hand — and the woman, very slowly, set the handbag down on the dresser by the door, and walked over to the table, and stood for a long moment looking down at the photograph.

The woman did not, at first, pick the photograph up.

The woman said, after a long moment, very softly, to the photograph, 'Hello, you.'

The woman said, after a second long moment, 'I was wondering if she'd kept us up. She said she would.'

Elin said, in the orderly voice she had been taught by her mother to use for things she did not, at first, know how to take, 'You are the girl on the right.'

The woman said, 'I am the girl on the right.'

Elin said, 'You are her sister.'

The woman said, 'I am her sister. I am, in fact, dear, more than that, but that's the part Mr Vaughan needs to take you through in his office at four. He has the paperwork. He has the photographs that match. We had eighteen years together in the same kitchen in Carmarthenshire before she left for the cottage you were small in, dear, and I left for Llandeilo, where I have been since 1971, where my husband and I have a small bookshop, and where I have, every Christmas for fifty-three years, written your mother a letter she has not, except in a small way that you will hear about this afternoon, returned. We agreed to that, dear. It is not a sad thing. It was a thing we did because of what we were.'

Elin said, 'What were you.'

The woman, who had not yet, since coming into the kitchen, taken her eyes off the photograph on the table, looked up at Elin.

The woman had eyes the same colour as Elin's mother. The woman had eyes the same colour as Elin.

The woman said, very gently, 'Twins, dear.'

She paused.

She said, 'And one rather difficult other thing. But Mr Vaughan can tell you the other thing.'

Then she sat down at the kitchen table of the bungalow in Tenby — in the chair that had been Elin's mother's chair, on the side of the table that had been Elin's mother's side, with the same small crooked half-smile that Elin had been taught by her own mirror for thirty-three years to be wary of — and she folded her thin hands in front of her, on the cloth, and she waited, with the orderly patience of a woman who had been waiting on this chair for fifty-three years to sit on it, for Elin to sit down opposite her.

Elin, after a long moment, sat down opposite her.

Outside, in the garden of the bungalow opposite, the thrush, after a long silence, began, very quietly, to sing again.

—

At four o'clock that afternoon, in the small first-floor office of Mr Vaughan, the small precise solicitor in Tenby, Mr Vaughan would open his small precise hand and would hand the will of Elin's mother to the woman on Elin's left — to the woman who, by that time, Elin had been told the name of, and the name of the bookshop in Llandeilo, and the name of the husband she had been married to since 1976, and the name of the rather difficult other thing — and Mr Vaughan would not, while he handed the will to the woman on Elin's left, look at Elin.

But Elin would, by then, have known for several hours that he wasn't going to.

And on the kitchen table of the bungalow in Tenby, when she and the woman who was her mother's twin had stood up after the second pot of tea and the woman had gone out to her car for the box of letters she had kept since 1971, Elin would, very quietly, very precisely, pick up the walnut-framed photograph in her right hand, and turn it over, and lift the small brass tabs at the back of the frame for the first time in her life, and slide her thumbnail under the acid-free tissue, and find — in a hand she had never seen, in a careful blue biro, on the back of the print —

Carys & Mari. The morning of the eleventh. Llandeilo.

And below that, in a second hand, smaller, sharper, the same hand that Elin had been reading on the back of her birthday cards for thirty-three years,

The day we agreed.