Lila

There is a framed photograph on Lila’s bedside table that she hasn’t yet had the energy, or perhaps the inclination, to get rid of. Four faces squished together in front of an enormous aquarium in some foreign holiday ­attraction—she forgets where ­now—a shoal of enormous iridescent stripy fish gazing blankly from behind them. Violet, pushing up her nose with one finger and pulling down the lower lids of her eyes so that she looks like a grotesque waxwork; Celie, in a Breton shirt, also pulling a face, although given she must have been thirteen by then, a little more self-consciously; Lila smiling vainly, as if hoping that this will be a lovely family shot despite all the evidence; and Dan, his smile not quite reaching his eyes, his expression enigmatic, his hand resting on Violet’s T‑shirted shoulder.

This last family photograph is the first thing she sees in the morning, and the last she sees at night, and although she knows she should keep it where it won’t color her day, for some reason she hasn’t quite fathomed she can’t put it in the drawer. Sometimes, in her sleepless hours, she watches the strips of moonlight slide across her bedroom ceiling, glances at that photograph, and thinks wistfully about the family she could have had, all the pictures of holidays that will never exist—rainy weekends in Cornwall, exotic beaches with them all dressed in white—a joyful graduation in front of some red-brick university, perhaps Celie’s wedding, proud parents at her side; all ghostly, ephemeral images of a life that have simply evaporated in front of her.

And sometimes she thinks about getting a big glob of Blu Tack and squidging it right over Dan’s face.