A Division of the Light Read Free

like a root left in the ground by the stroke of an ax. Gregory’s photographs testify to the force that propelled her body forward with a single blow. He studies them on a monitor, weighing their virtues and failings, and it is not long before he begins to manipulate them. Because of the high contrast between sunlight and shade they have unintended limitations. However, adjustments that are merely necessary soon become creative.
    Gregory drains the images of color. He contracts the margins. He enlarges sections until their texture becomes granular. One of the frames he crops so severely that all it contains is Alice’s tumbled hair parted into shadowy roots and the fallen sunglasses that have darkened to jet. Her body is abstracted into balances of shape and texture. When he has finished, Gregory puts his visual rearrangements on a slideshow program and assesses them even more critically.
    He does not put his shot of the escaping thieves on the slideshow, although unexpectedly he has come to regret that there are nomeans of identification to be found within it. Indeed, the picture contains so little information that no arrest could ever be achieved from its content. Gregory understands that it is impossible that he should become an agent for justice, and yet to him it is also inexplicable that he should fantasize about being thought of as a kind of savior.
    In almost a week he has not heard from Alice. Although at first he assumes that she has merely been delayed in returning his money, he soon begins to believe that she has never intended to. This does not prevent him from thinking more and more about her.
    After seven days he was due to leave on his next assignment and still he had heard nothing. Her silence was disappointing but perhaps inevitable. Gregory told himself that he, too, had been robbed of cash, but only of twenty pounds, and not by opportunist thieves but by a woman who had probably simply decided that there was no moral need to return a stranger’s kindness.
    Nevertheless he wanted to hear from Alice. The money was not important. He was willing to forget that. At one point he checked the call log of his mobile and discovered her work number. When he rang it an unfamiliar voice answered and quoted a company name. Although he had intended to ask if Alice Fell was there, he immediately closed the connection when she did not answer.
    He told himself he should think no more about the robbery. And besides, he was leaving within the next few hours. And yet when his daughter Cassie rang on the landline Gregory realized that he had wanted the call to be from Alice. Disappointment hit him as a sudden ache across the lower line of his ribcage. Thiswas both irrational and reprehensible; he had, after all, been expecting Cassie to phone.
    After the call was over Gregory felt guilty about his crazy hope that it could have been Alice. He was also uneasy that Cassie might have registered the evident deflation in his tone. Perhaps she could have learned more than he had wanted to reveal.
    For three days each week his daughter worked as his assistant, secretary and unofficial manager, and on the other two days she worked for a national cancer charity. Gregory had grown dependent on her abilities. She organized his contracts, diary, correspondence, and accounts, and often she helped out in the studio. On occasion she had even taken photographs instead of him.
    Although he had told her what had happened Gregory had not confessed that he had given money to Alice Fell. Instead he used the robbery as a cautionary tale of how easily one could be attacked on a city street in broad daylight. Cassie’s reaction had been so offhand that he felt it necessary to repeat how risks could be minimized. He recognized that she and Alice were about the same age, and he could easily imagine Cassie being struck between the shoulder blades in the same callous manner. Furthermore, Gregory could picture how his daughter would look if