In Her Shadow by Louise Douglas

for the bus home. The camera had been a present from my parents. I’d taken it to school with me, in my bag.
    That November afternoon, Jago had been standing at the bus stop, as usual, with the Williams twins. I was a little afraid of them. They were older boys, and they spent their free time roaring around the lanes on motorbikes that spewed fumes, and shooting foxes. Mum had seen them drinking cider in the field behind the church with some holiday girls. The tone of her voice implied that this was shocking behaviour. Sometimes when Jago was with them, he ignored me, but that day he smiled. I said, ‘Hello.’ I was wearing a badge on my jumper that said: Birthday Girl .
    ‘Is it your birthday, then?’ Jago asked.
    ‘He’s quick!’ Ellen said. We all laughed and he pushed his hair back out of his face from embarrassment and shifted from one foot to another.
    ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get you a present.’
    I shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
    Jago jiggled about on his feet.
    ‘I’ll give you something better than a present,’ he said.
    Right there, in front of all the kids queuing for buses, he put his boy-arms around me and leaned down and pressed his lips against mine. Jago gave me a birthday kiss. Cheers rippled round the bus stop. I burned with delight and embarrassment.
    And then, flushed and happy, I took the camera out of my bag and asked Jago to take a picture of Ellen and me. We stood together, side by side, in our black tights and winter coats, while Jago bounced about in front of us, trying to find the best angle for the shot. Ellen’s head was leaning against mine, my blonde hair tangling with her darker, longer hair. At thirteen, I still had puppy fat, my tummy bulged against the coat waistband. While I looked awkward, Ellen looked coltish. Our postures were different. I was standing face-on to the camera, my feet at 45 degrees to each other, my arms by my sides, smiling shyly from under my fringe, my cheeksdimpled and the metal brace on my teeth just visible. The scarf my mother had knitted was tied in a knot around my neck and the red woolly cuffs of my gloves were sticking out of my coat pockets. Ellen was side-on, next to me, one arm around my shoulder, the other bent at the elbow with the hand on her hip. Her chin was pointed upwards and her lips were pursed in a pretty pout. I’d never noticed before that she was posing, but in the cold light of that morning, as an adult, I understood. Jago had kissed me and now Ellen was flirting with Jago because she could not bear to be left out.
    I put the photograph, face down, on the floor. The postcards Ellen had sent me from Magdeburg were still in the box. I flicked through them. Her handwriting was uneven and messy, there were crossings-out and scribbles. I didn’t read the cards, but dropped them on top of the photograph. I tipped out some school reports, Jago’s old school tie, a picture of Snoopy he had drawn for me, a metal dog tag in the shape of a bone with Trixie inscribed on the front, a discarded watch without a strap, seashells and some dried flowers the origins of which I no longer remembered.
    At the bottom of the box was the second photograph of Ellen. It was a small square snap that I had taken with the same camera. I picked the photograph up, turned it over. The colours had faded a little, washed with time, but the image took me back there, to the garden of Thornfield House, on Ellen’s eighteenth birthday. She was wearing the silver-grey dress her father had given her the year before and was standing beneath an arch made of wrought iron that Adam Tremlett had erected as part of the garden restoration; it was wound through with climbing roses. Anybody who looked at that picture and didn’t know might have thought it was an innocent, commemorative snap, but if they looked closer, they would have seen that something was wrong with the image. It wasn’t the tiredness and stress that showed clearlyin Ellen’s face,