The photographer’s finger hovers over the shutter-release as Henry Lomax turns his head and glimpses for the first time the face of a ghost who has haunted his dreams for the last three weeks, give or take a day. Although his head stays fixed his eyes do a double-take, scanning the image again to try and spot the trick, to make that second-glance realization of their mistake and move on, but it is undoubtedly her and he remains, staring, trapped.

She is not beautiful. Not the way most of us would say beauty lies. Her eyes shine bright from beneath her over-heavy lashes, true, but her hair is greasy and careless, the contours of her body hidden in the shapeless folds of cheap, poorly chosen clothes, a tracksuit top that went out of fashion years ago, even Henry knows this. Even Henry knows that she does not look like a goddess, but she has haunted him for so long now that he knows she is already his, he only has to step out and claim her. Her body beneath these clothes fits his perfectly, in a way his wife’s no longer can. He has felt it, alone at nights.

She senses his gaze and turns to look at him, and for once he does not pull away, for this is not an unknown gaze of the type he would usually recoil from, this is a homecoming, a reunion, and he knows that she will not be able to ignore him, just as he cannot stray from her. Yet as these two looks meet he feels the pavement, the people, the shop-fronts fall away and realizes that a decision must be made, to leap or not, and suddenly he is unaware of what he will do, of which path the future will take.

He waits for a glance, for a decision on her part that will remove his responsibility, but he knows it will not come.

* * *

“I need a hand. Henry.”

He can hear but he chooses to ignore her. He remains intent on his task, slow, smooth brush strokes.

“Henry? Hen? A hand. The potatoes?”

“Busy,” he calls back.

“I can’t do it by myself. They’re your friends too. Henry?”

“Busy.”

“We can cancel? You said you wanted them, but we can cancel?”

He’d known that having guests would only make things worse, but he’d agreed to it, subconsciously willing a confrontation, willing it all to end. He can see that now, now the time has come. It seems all he wants to do now is fight, an anger that wells up in his veins and requires a vent, demanding a release.

“I’ll be up in a second.”

He places the bracelet slowly back on the newspaper, laying the brush neatly to one side, but he does not stand yet. He wants to prolong this moment, to let it stretch as long as it can while she waits, while she wonders on his response. It’s that fighting feeling again, that self-righteous anger.

He shifts the brush slightly to glance at an article, the accompanying photograph showing the local museum in the background, a child on a skateboard in the foreground, can’t be more than nine. The child has been caught with his board off the ground, twisting as the tarmac rushes back to meet him in a spin that seems to court disaster, but you know that he’s going to land safely, a look of confidence in his eye, he’s done this a hundred times before. Award Winning Photographer Snaps Auld Reekie. His eyes scan the article, but take little of it in. The boy is much more interesting, his expression says much more than the hack from the local paper. The photographer is a local man made good, in London circles. Come back to his home for his new project, the photo of the boy is one of his. Henry can see why he has been such a success.

She calls again, breaking his thought process and refiring his blood. He waits a little longer before heading up to the kitchen. It’s somehow easier to spend these seconds on his own, delaying the moment when he has to face her and the fighting spirit resurfaces, delaying it and yet also making it inevitable.

He takes the stairs slowly, one at a time, and pauses to switch off the basement light on his way.

“About time. I need a hand with these out the oven. Please. Sorry to disturb but, time’s rushing by.”

He wraps a tea towel round each hand, slowly, and opens the oven door, the hazy blast of hot air prickling his face. The tray of potatoes hiss and spit as he lifts them out, the metal slowly burning towards his hands, gradually warming his flesh until it reaches unbearable proportions and he has to put them down with a clatter on the stove top.

“Careful.”

The heat has boiled his blood even more but he bottles it carefully inside, not allowing the steam to show. He knows that if he keeps it hidden the explosion will be twice as strong when it comes, and maybe then he will have the courage not to back down, to speak his mind at last and ask her to leave.

“It’ll be good to see Jack again. And Claire, too. We don’t much any more, do we? Socialize? I can’t remember the last.”

He lets her prattle on even as it stokes his blood.

“I think he’s changed jobs. Or something. They have more money anyway, she was telling me they’re off to Majorca soon, second honeymoon. I said good luck to them. You know, have to enjoy it while you can.”

The anger has boiled to the top now and he feels it begin to overflow, feels it boiling from its crater into the open air and refusing to cool, evaporating the sweat from his upper lip.

“Do they know,” he says quietly, said more as a statement than a question, a challenge thrown down. They both know what this is about, and now the gauntlet is down.

“I don’t see. I’m not sure.”

“Do they know about him.”

“I’m not -“

“Have they met him.”

A pause. She pretends to think, to cast her mind back.

“Her, yes, I think. I think so.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure. She called round, I think. With something. Some article.”

“She saw him here? When he was here? She met him in my house?”

“Yes, I think. My memory’s not -“

“Did she know who he was?”

“I think I told her something.”

“What did you tell her? Did you say it?”

“The plumber, I think.”

“Your lover? Does she know? Did you say he was your lover, did you tell her? Did everyone know but me? In my own home?”

A silence falls, like always. The point has been reached again when neither has anything left to say, when the accusations are spent and the lies and excuses have been unraveled, when neither of them know what is expected of them next.

Henry breaks the impasse, turning his back on her, facing the stairs back down.

“I’ll be down here if you need me again. Call when they come.”

“I’ve apologized. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. What more?”

She calls after him as he heads back down but he closes his ears, pushes the thought of her from his mind. As he flicks the switch the room is bathed in white light again, glittering off the bracelet where he has cleaned it, where it rests on its bed of newsprint.

There is something reliable in an artifact that has lasted the centuries, like the pieces he sees at the museum, protected behind glass cases. There is a feeling of permanence, of lasting worth, of intransigence. These objects seem to have a will of their own, a stubborn refusal to change that becomes a virtue over time, what began as an unmalleable hardness becoming a welcoming solidity. That the bracelet has lasted this long, waited in the earth for him to find it, feels like the perfect commitment.

He seats himself at the table and picks up his brush again, using the same smooth, measured strokes.

Refusal to change becomes a virtue over time.

He has started to dream lately, of the woman who wore the bracelet before it sought refuge in the soil. He has been imagining her while he works, building up a picture from the one fragment of her life that remains, extrapolating her lips and hair from this twist of metal which once brushed her skin, and now she has walked into his life, entered his dream world as well as his waking hours, made him her own. She is beautiful because she never changes in his mind, never swings from one mood to another. She is beautiful because he created her, almost as much as she chose him.

Her eyebrows are like the bristles of the brush, long and ever so slightly damp, dark, revealing. He brushes the bristles across the back of his hand and imagines that they are hers, what they called a butterfly kiss as a child. She wears the bracelet now, on her left wrist. The metal shifts with every turn of her body, her wrist is small and delicate. He imagines it brushing her skin, smooth and clear, the smoothest touch like finely sieved flour. The fine hairs on her forearm start slowly to lift as he strokes them, a rash of gooseflesh in the cold of the basement. He feels strangely detached from this, from her, and he wonders if this is what Lyn felt when she cheated on him, or if it is something peculiar to this relationship, peculiar to his love affair with a ghost dug up from the garden. He recognizes its peculiarity, he isn’t that blind.

That night he dreams of her again, images of her coming to him in the dark, stepping through the door of the spare room which is now his own, warming up the emptiness of the bed. It creaks with her weight, cheap springs not made for two bodies. They do not make love for how can they when she is not flesh and bone, but she keeps him company, keeps his mind warm in the loneliness of the small hours. Lyn wants him to move back to the master bedroom, but he cannot. He could not control the anger in such proximity, he could not sleep with her infidelity. Besides, to move would be to abandon his life here, his new love, and he cannot bring himself to do that.

When he awakes the bed is damp with sweat, and in the confusion of his half-woken mind he thinks it is her sweat, the ghost’s, in those brief seconds before full consciousness. Later he realizes his mistake, but he cannot help wishing it were true.

Was it mere chance that led him to strike the bracelet with his spade? Was it chance, or was it destined, was this a love-match that even time couldn’t break apart? He tries to convince himself that it was the latter, but he knows he is being foolish, that he is an old, lonely romantic who is willing to believe anything now, anything other than the truth.

He dreams of a timeless love calling across the ages, and he dreams of a ghost at his side, the bracelet cold on his chest where she holds him.

* * *

The photographer’s finger slowly depresses the button and the shutter clicks, winking at the gentleman across the street. He knows already that this picture will be one of his greatest, the key point of his new series, the captured instant around which the collection will revolve, for in that brief second he glimpsed and grabbed something timeless in the gentleman’s expression, a wavering, almost as if he were suspended in limbo, not a busy Edinburgh street. The photo is of a man poised on the line between past, present and future, looking, hoping, momentarily hovering out of time as he decides which way he will fall, which path he will follow, which life he will lead.

In exhibition the photograph will be labeled ‘Portrait Of A Man On The Brink’.

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