through the hundreds of photographs on her phone, pausing at a closeup of his face in profile, a stolen moment during a lecture one morning. Her finger hovered over the delete button.
It had been over a fortnight now since they had spoken, nearly a month since they had lain encircling one another. Alice knew it would end when she left the city. She had promised her father it would end. His disapproval when he found out was almost as painful as learning of his diagnosis. Things changed in that moment and he began to distance himself, as if he were ashamed of her in some way.
***
‘You have to end it.’ Her father sat forward, allowed Alice to place another pillow behind him.
Roles reversed, she now the carer instead of the child. She knew how much he loathed being indebted to anyone, hated how the medication made him physically weak, especially when his mind was still raging.
‘Why?’
‘Because people are beginning to talk.’ He winced as he lay back, the pain that was never vocalised now etched all over his clean-shaven face. ‘It’s been going on for too long, Alice, and you deserve better.’
‘Define better.’ She couldn’t help it, toying with him even though she knew he was right, even though he was sick. She was so used to him fighting her battles alongside her that it irritated when he pointed out her mistakes.
‘Just because they’re no longer living together doesn’t mean there isn’t something between them. Don’t be the reason for ending a marriage.’
‘What would you know about marriage?’
‘More than you.’ His eyes closed and she understood the conversation to be over.
***
When he died part of her was desperate for Stefan, for the familiar comfort of him, but it was impossible to speak to someone with a ready-made family waiting back in Sweden whenever he wanted. And now? Now more than ever she yearned for space, a never-ending stream of space stretching out between them too far for him to claw her back to his bed. She avoided his calls, deleted his messages without listening to them – afraid at the fragility of her heart and what it would mean if she allowed herself to hear even one utterance, one exhalation of breath that she longed to feel against her skin.
***
Alice looked across the street to the bar. She didn’t need to hear what anyone was saying; the pitch of their voices, the scent of the air, it was full of clues, telling her where she was in the world. It was yet another thing her father had taught her, taking her to different cities and impressing on her the importance to understand a culture from personal experience. He said it was necessary to taste the atmosphere, to wrap yourself up in the feel of a place in order to truly know it.
He encouraged her to find her own truths: what made each city special to her. She did so by taking photographs. Her father would often turn around to find she had wandered over to take a picture of a dog tied to a lamp post, waiting for his owner to return. Or an abandoned newspaper next to an empty coffee cup in a café. He would smile then, watching as she collected memories in the things that made her take a second look.
For her eighteenth birthday they had travelled to Venice where he bought her a vintage Leica from a shop hidden in amongst the multitude of tourist traps. The walls were covered in photographs taken by the shop’s patron, hair slicked back from a face lined with stories. He had smiled at her choice of camera, telling her that a true photographer could capture a moment without the need for a filter or Photoshop.
Together she and her father had explored the Weihnachtsmarkt in Berlin, Alice being led by her senses from one sugar-laden stall to the next as her father sipped on a gluhwein. He showed her how the sunset cast a different light over the river in Budapest than it did on the sea in Barcelona. He taught her about ancient people in Rome, Cairo, even Yucatán. But he never brought her to Paris.
One of the few things Alice had always known about her mother was that she was French. It was how her father explained her natural ability to learn the language, but he steadfastly refused to set foot in Paris, despite her protestations, saying that he had no desire to revisit the city that had brought him so much sorrow. At the time Alice believed he was referring to her mother’s death, but now she wondered if it was something else that had made him run from the past.
Her phone beeped with another text. Swinging her legs into the room she put her glass down on a small side table, next to her Leica that was safely strapped into its case. She bent over the bed to read the text message.
Call me. Please. I’m going crazy without you.
Straightening up she went over to the compact en suite tucked away in the corner of the room and slid open the door. Turning on the tap she watched the water circling round the plughole, descending into darkness. She held her wrists under the steady flow, staring at her flushed reflection and waiting for her blood to cool.
How was it that he had this effect on her, even hundreds of miles away? She could imagine him bent over his phone, brow furrowed, as he tapped in a message. Was he in their café? Making notes as he finished off his usual order of smoked salmon on rye with a triple espresso? Or was he nursing a pint of bitter in the Turf, tucked away in the corner table by the bar and reading a copy of the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet?
Stop it, she told herself, slamming her hands against the porcelain sink. You made a decision to leave, to cut all ties. A frightened face looked back at her. But what if he knew everything? Would that make him run to me, or back to her?
Her phone began to ring and she clasped her hands over her ears, willing the noise to stop. She sank onto the bed and lay back against the soft covers, noticing a spider busy making a web around the light fitting on the ceiling. She traced the delicate lines through the air with her fingers and was rewarded with a memory of walking across the school lawn one autumnal morning. Her father had shown her the symmetry in the webs that were entangled in the holly bushes that flanked the main entrance, dewdrops hanging from every thread.
Standing up she crossed back to the window, draining her glass and leaning over the railings to watch someone exit the bar. A woman looked both ways down the street. As her head turned Alice’s eye was drawn to something on her face. Holding up her phone she took a couple of photographs, zooming in on the woman as she walked over to a girl who was smoking in the shadows.
Alice reached over and retrieved her Leica, unbuckling the straps and easing the weight of the camera into her palm. Sliding off the lens cap she checked the settings and peered through the viewfinder. She was too high up to catch any of their conversation, but the woman’s movements seemed to suggest penance, one hand resting on the girl’s arm. Then a rise and fall of her shoulders, a sigh, before she turned and walked away, the click of her stilettos echoing off the cobbled street.
Alice followed the woman with her lens, the light from a street lamp illuminating the flush on her cheek before she slipped round the corner and was gone.
Alice walked over to the far side of the room where she had pinned up a map of the city. Next to this were dozens of photographs: some new, some old. She touched her fingertips to one of her and her friends taken at her twentieth birthday party last summer. They were grinning at the camera with sticky lips and tanned arms.
Another was of her father, head tilted back to watch the fireworks from the window of the Great Hall at school. Around him were dotted memories of people and places, links to Alice’s past that pulled at her whenever
