A Habit of Dying Read Free Page A

peeping Tom. Now these raw words gave her that same sensation. She closed the book and put it back in the box.
    As if needing an antidote to the unexpected intrusion into her own sensitivities, Lydia seized the prize from her collection, lay it squarely on her desk in front of her, hesitated a second to catch the last frisson of anticipation, then opened the collection of Edwardian photographs that had first attracted her. Unseeing faces from long ago looked out at her from the pages, fixed in aspic, forever sepia. Men and women caught at an instant in lives that had long been led, with all the superiority of age, the unknowing freshness of youth. Lydia turned the first leaf and let her eye settle to the photograph that had brought her to this point. A group of fifteen, casually arranged in the time-honoured way, adults seated with younger folk standing behind them, children on the ground. A family, certainly, most likely with grandparents seated in the middle with their children around them, their grandchildren at their feet. Lydia let her gaze fall slowly on each in turn, looking into the eyes, reaching out for the warmth of the summer day, listening for the sounds of an Edwardian summer. And beneath the photo, arranged in three lines to correspond to the three rows of faces, were written the names
Mr Melville, Self, Alice, James, Henry
and below
Beatrice, Isabella, Papa, Mama, Albert, Joseph
and finally the youngest
Phoebe, Albert M, Albert, Harriet.
In the same hand beneath the names was written
Longlands 1911.
Priceless stuff, thought Lydia, already letting her mind take her to a moment at some point in the future when a great great grandchild of Papa and Mama would be joyfully united with these Alberts and Phoebes and Josephs.
    For maybe half an hour or more Lydia leafed through the album, soaking up the people, studying faces, noting the change in dress, the uniforms towards the end of the album, the same names repeated, children maturing through adolescence. Just as importantwere the absences of some as time passed. But this was detail that would be noted and catalogued later, for now the only purpose was to get a feel for this family, slip under the skins of these people. For all her looking, for all her breathing in of the faces and lives, it came as a shock to realise suddenly that ’self and Alice must surely be twins. At this stage of her process she did not trouble herself with detail, with noting each name. Lydia looked through again to see if there was a photograph of just the two of them together, but there was not. The 1911 tableau was the only one in the album where they appeared together, stood side by side behind Papa and Mama. At length Lydia put the album aside, content with her progress. She guessed that it covered perhaps the ten years to 1920.
    Two volumes remained in her cardboard box. One she knew already to be a postcard album, but someone had been there before her and stripped out all but a few. Lydia looked at those that were left, carefully removing them from their mounts to check for the message they had contained. All were blank, collected presumably for the sake of the scenes they depicted. A church in Whitehaven, the High Street in Braintree Essex, Christ Church, Oxford, which Lydia recognised with surprise. Random images? Any possible connection remained elusive.
    The last album was more productive. Another family album, most likely from the 1930’s she supposed, with perhaps thirty or forty crisp snapshots, all carefully mounted in the pre-cut slots of the brown card pages. Some with names like Bertie and Henry and Verity. Bertie in an RAF uniform, Verity as a bridesmaid, Henry and Kathleen, smart on town hall steps. Distant lives, distant times. Lydia searched for a key that would move her closer to these people, but found none. Perhaps she was too tired, still thinking perhaps of Papa and Mama in 1911, seeing them as her best way in. She put Bertie and Verity aside, closed her eyes and