could not be sure if they were at home or not. I got as far as the back door and held my breath, eager for sounds. The first thing I heard was a child crying and I found that odd. It was the crying of a small child, as small as Martin had been when I left for the front. How was that possible? I wondered if I had got the wrong house or if Janet and the child had moved away without my knowing and another family had moved in. The baby’s crying came from far off, apparently from our bedroom. I peered in. There was the kitchen, empty, no one there, no food. Night was falling, it was about time Janet started preparing something for supper; perhaps she would do so as soon as the child had calmed down. I could not wait, however, and I walked round to the front of the house to see if I had any better luck there. On my right was the living-room window, on my left, on the other side of the front door, our bedroom window. I walked round the house to the right, keeping close to the wall, half crouching so as not to be seen. Then I slowly drew myself up until I could see into the living room with my left eye. That was empty too, the window was closed but I could still hear the child crying, the child who could not possibly be Martin. Janet must be in the bedroom, calming the child down, whoever that child was, and always assuming that the woman was Janet. I was just about to move over to the window on the left when the living-room door opened and I saw Janet come in. It was her, I hadn’t got the wrong house and no, they hadn’t moved away without my knowing. She was wearing an apron, just as I had pictured her. She always wore an apron; she said taking it off was a waste of time because she would only have to put it on again later to do something else. She looked very pretty, she hadn’t changed. I saw and thought all this in a matter of seconds, because behind her, immediately behind, I saw a man following her in. He was very tall and from my perspective his head was cut off by the upper frame of the window. He was in shirtsleeves, but still had his tie on, as if he had just come home from work and so far had only had time to take off his jacket. He seemed very much at home. When he came in, he had walked behind Janet the way husbands in their own homes walk behind their wives. If I crouched any lower, I would be unable to see anything, so I decided that I would wait until he sat down to get a good look at his face. He turned round for a few seconds, presenting me with a close-up view of the back of his white shirt, his hands in his trouser pockets. When he moved away from the window, I could see Janet again. They did not speak. They seemed angry. It was one of those brief, tense silences that tend to follow marital arguments. Then Janet sat down on the sofa and crossed her legs. I thought it odd that she should be wearing sheer stockings and high heels when she had her apron on. She suddenly buried her face in her hands and started crying. He crouched down by her side, but not to console her; he was just watching her cry. And it was then that I saw his face. His face was my face. The man in shirtsleeves looked exactly like me. I do not mean that he bore an unusually close resemblance to me: his features were identical to mine, they were mine; it was like looking at myself in a mirror or, rather, like watching one of those home movies we made shortly after Martin was born. Janet’s father had given us a movie camera so that we could see our child when he was no longer a child. Janet’s father had had money before the war and I hoped that, despite any financial difficulties, Janet would have been able to film something of the years with Martin that I had lost. I even wondered if what I was seeing was, in fact, a film. Perhaps I had arrived at precisely the moment when Janet, feeling nostalgic, had chosen to sit down in the living-room to watch one of those films showing scenes that took place before I went away. No, that was
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