A Habit of Dying Read Free Page B

considered the way forward. She knew what she would do but still rehearsed the process. The first question to consider was whether or not this little job lot of other people’s lives were connected by anything other than the dog-eared cardboard box that they came to be in. The first pass through had shown nothing that stood out as aconnection, and anyway, that would wait until Lydia had dragged every piece of information that she could from each of the photographs, noted it, tabulated it, researched it. Then, from these labours, she might possibly find the connection or find that indeed there was no connection.

    The last time that Lydia had performed this oh-so-pleasurably private task had been six months earlier and then, as now, she found herself anxious to establish the essential first piece of the jigsaw from which she might reveal the whole picture. So she started where she always knew that she would start, with the 1911 photograph. She prepared her notepad, her laptop, and the little yellow post-it notes ready to page mark the album. On her computer she made a spreadsheet to tabulate names and comments, with columns set up ready to receive the hoped-for entries from census records, birth, marriage and death entries, war service records, address notes, even columns for as yet unknown sources. If any of her colleagues from work had ever guessed at her doing such things for pleasure they would surely have not believed it, for did she not spend the greater part of her working days entering endless information into spreadsheets? And she would do this for pleasure at home in her own time? But they would also have shrugged and put it down to Lydia being Lydia, a little off beat, a little secretive when surely she had no secrets to keep. She knew that they whispered a little about her, knew that when a casual question about the weekend was posed on a Monday, the question had been decided by committee and the answer would be reported back at the next opportunity. Like most of her sex, her work-mates had a need to chat, to check whether there was any competition around, gain some knowledge and thereby some possible advantage. Sometimes she fed them a titbit or two, sometimes they were true, sometimes they were nearly true.
    First, each photograph was numbered and entered into her list. This was to be her ’A‘ album and when she had finished numberingshe found that there were fifty-three photographs. Then each photograph was described, and the number and sex of the people it featured were carefully recorded. All this was simple mechanical work, but what followed was more satisfying. Where there was a background other than a studio backdrop, Lydia examined it for any information that might be normally overlooked. So when she did this with the Longlands image she saw that it was taken in a garden with a large house in the background which, by its style, she took it to be fairly modern for its day. Looking under a magnifying glass she also saw another figure at one of the windows, and although it was a tiny image, it appeared to be the figure of a maid with a cap and white apron. Having servants was nothing if not the norm for such a family in 1911, and most likely there would be more than one in the household, a cook at least, and perhaps a gardener.
    She progressed through each photograph in this manner and then began the process of matching any information from the captions to the people shown. From there she was able to cross-reference an individual to each photograph in which they appeared. Where there was any doubt over someone being the same person as in another photograph, Lydia also noted this. It was a long and detailed process, but she had proved and enhanced it over the course of her previous investigations. She worked with an application any employer would have been proud of. And she did so in the knowledge that it was a process which could bring results.
    Working on her project in this way, on and off in the