The photograph

Fiction, about two adults over 18. She had negotiated the implement and the number in a pub in February. Nobody had put the camera on the list, because nobody thought to.

Fiction. Every character in this story is a consenting adult over 18.

A story by the editor.

It was over. That is the first thing to say, because it changes everything about what came next. The hairbrush was back on the chest of drawers. I had my dressing gown on with the belt done up, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed holding a glass of water Niall had fetched without being asked, and the part of my head that runs a commentary on everything had gone quiet in the way I go there for.

Then he said, "Can I ask you something. Would you be all right with me taking a photo?"

And the temperature of the room changed.

I want to write down what thirty seconds of that actually contains, because from outside it is nothing at all. A man asks a question. A woman thinks about it. Anybody watching would see two people sitting in a bedroom.

Inside, I never got near the question. I was too busy drafting.

Within about two seconds I had a sentence assembled and three more behind it in case the first one failed. Sorry. It is a thing from before, I know it is irrational, we can talk about it another time if you want.

I was already apologising for an answer I had not given yet. I was already deciding how much of the evening it was going to cost me and whether the cost was worth the no, and running the calculation in a dressing gown at half past ten with my backside still hot, which is not a state anybody should be doing arithmetic in.

I was also, underneath all of it, doing something worse. I was checking his face.

Laurence was 2011 to 2014, my early thirties, and I have not said the name out loud in a long while.

He asked in the second month. I said no. He said that was completely fine. Ten days later he asked again as a joke, and when the answer was the same he said he was surprised, because he had thought we were past that.

The third time it came dressed as a question about trust and whether I was ever going to let anybody in. The fourth time he did not ask at all, he simply went flat for a whole Saturday, and I ended the Saturday by taking the photograph myself and sending it at eleven at night so that Sunday would be all right.

He deleted it in front of me when I asked, in 2014. Or he held up a screen with something vanishing off it, which I have since learned is a different event.

So there is a file, or there is not a file, with my face and the rest of me in one frame, on a phone that has been replaced twice since, attached to an account I never had the password to. Eleven years. There has not been a single day on which I could have found out.

None of that was about Niall and all of it was in the room. The word photo opens a department I have never managed to shut.

What I actually said was, "Ummm." And then, "I would rather not, I think."

Niall said, "Of course not."

Two words, with no pause in front of them. No flicker, and I was hunting for one, because I was trained to hunt for one by a man who was very good at his job. He said it the way you would answer somebody asking whether you wanted the window open.

Then he stood up and said the immersion had been on an hour and did I want a bath, and went out onto the landing to check the airing cupboard, and that was the end of it. His part of it lasted about four seconds. He has no memory of it whatsoever. I checked, six weeks later, and he had to be reminded what I was talking about.

I was odd for the rest of the evening and he noticed and left it alone, which is its own skill and one that took him about a decade to learn.

In the bath I did the thing I do, which is to take an evening apart looking for where the damage is. There was no damage. That was the problem. I kept putting my hands into it feeling for the sharp bit and there was nothing in there, and I stayed in the water long past the point of usefulness, and my knees went red and blotchy on top of everything else.

Here is what I got to, somewhere around the water going cold.

The hairbrush that night had been hard. I had asked for it to be hard. There is a particular quality to the last eight of forty which I will leave undescribed, except to say that I wanted it and I got it and it emptied me out completely.

But all of that sat inside an agreement. We had built it on a napkin in a pub in February. I knew what was coming, I had agreed to every part of it in advance, and I could have stopped the whole thing with one word we had chosen together over two pints of Guinness.

The photo was outside the agreement. It came with no warning, in a room where I had no lines prepared, at the exact moment I had the least capacity to argue about anything. That is a far better test of a man than forty strokes with a hairbrush. He passed it without knowing he was being tested, and he was finished inside a second.

And the reason it landed harder than any of the rest of the evening is that the no cost me nothing. I had eleven years of budgeting for what a no like that costs. The bill never came. I was left standing in my own bathroom holding all the money.

I asked him about it a week later in the car, because the car is where I can say things without anybody having to look at me.

I said, "When you asked about the photo. And I said no. Did you mind?"

He said, "No."

I said, "Right, but did you mind a bit."

He thought about it properly, which is one of the better things about him, and indicated, and came off at the junction, and then said, "I think I had forgotten about it before I got to the airing cupboard. It was a small thing I fancied. You did not fancy it. That is the end of a small thing."

Then he said, "Why, has it been bothering you," and I said no, and then had to say yes, and I told him about Laurence in about six sentences on the A34 while looking at a lorry. He did not say very much. He said the thing about the account and the password twice, quietly, as if he was filing it.

When we got in he asked whether he should leave his phone in the hall on Sundays. I said that was ridiculous and that I did not need managing. He said fine.

He has done it every Sunday since. It sits on the shelf by the front door under the bowl with the keys in, screen down, and I see it there when I hang my coat up. I have never mentioned it. Neither has he.

I have thought a few times about what I would say if he ever asked again, and I still do not know the answer, and I have decided that not knowing is allowed. What I do know is that I would not spend the thirty seconds drafting.