On the way home, Shelly found a film. A yellow cased, Kodak, Elite Chrome 36 exposure, colour slide film. It was just sitting there on the pavement. She’d got off the 19 bus from town and was waiting to cross the road, when she glanced down at her shoes, and noticed it. She considered for a moment and then bent down and picked it up. There was slight dent in the casing and some scuff marks where the black paint had come off to reveal the silver tin beneath. She shook it gently and although there was no sound, the weight of it suggested that the film was still inside. She put it in her coat pocket.
It was quite a while after she had got home that she remembered it. She had already locked the door, hung up her keys and made a cup of tea (in her favourite blue mug). It had begun to get dark. Standing at the kitchen window she watched as boys, with their hoods drawn up, sauntered past, swinging left foot, right foot. A lady with a baby stopped and adjusted the plastic cover on her pushchair as the rain that had been hanging, began to fall.
She had to go back into the hall to get it. She set it on the wooden kitchen table and turned on the overhead light. She didn’t really want to touch it so instead, she twirled a strand of long brown hair between her fingers.
She should at least try to locate the owner. They would surely have missed it. She remembered her aunt losing a film in the post once. She had sent it off for processing and eagerly awaited its return. It had been full of photographs taken at a birthday party. After two weeks of waiting she called first the processing lab, who regretted that they were unable to help, and then Royal Mail, who recommended the use of their recently introduced ‘Special Delivery’ service for all items of value – be they monetary or sentimental. After five weeks she began to lose hope. Later she was unsure which child’s birthday it had been and whether they had eaten the cake indoors or out. It was as if the photographs were congealed moments, which by their loss, had removed from existence the corresponding chunk of reality.
If someone had found that film and processed it they wouldn’t have known. They wouldn’t have felt the weight of those moments. Those intimate smiles would have been meaningless. Carried no value, simply by virtue of the fact that they no longer belonged to her Aunt. The film, the images and the moments, would be nothing more than chemical patterns on paper.
She thought about how that worked, how light shot through the lens of a camera and etched itself into the film. And then later how the image gradually appeared on the photographic paper, like sunburn, in all that red light. Fascinating that, thought Shelly, imprinting.
This film would be no different. Nothing on this film would be of significance; its value would have been lost with its owner. There could be pictures of a birthday party, a cat, a house, a beach at sunset and all of it would mean nothing to her. But wasn’t this true of anything lost? Say for example, one left one’s hat at a bus stop. The one that had been bought in Europe with Jamie. The one that was frayed around the edges from all the wearing. The finder would leave it there or chuck it away. They wouldn’t care. They would not know it was “The” hat and that its owner spent all afternoon searching for it.
Shelly twisted a strand of hair up towards her face and examined it for split ends. She got up to get some scissors, and leaning over the bin, cut a centimetre off three strands of hair. She thought about trying to put up an advert. What? Some photocopied A4 sheets? Call me if you’ve lost a film. No, that would not be a good idea. Having her number stuck up. Even an ad in the paper. You’d be just asking for all sorts of weirdoes ringing you up and a hundred-and-one 'told-you-so's from friends. Or a hotmail address? But anyone could email you. How would you be able to distinguish freaky_nutter from genuine_owner? She supposed that she could get them to name the film type. Yes, she could say, name the make and type of the film, as well as any distinguishing marks, and its yours. Would she have to meet them to drop it off, somewhere half across London, in the rain? It could be posted. That much was true. It could be posted.
She got up from the table and set the kettle to boil. There were drops of rain on the window. She picked absent mindedly at the grime around the on/off switch.
But say, you’d dropped a film, would you even look around for signs saying it had been found? Would you even know where you’d dropped it? Also there was the thing of it being a slide film. Not something you’d load into your point-and-shoot for a family day out. Actually, she thought, it was quite unlikely to hold anything personal really. It had to be some kind of proper photographs. Taken by a professional photographer.
She picked a spoon out of the sink and spooned sugar into the blue mug. One, two, teabag, water, milk
So if it was really important, wouldn’t you put up your own signs? “Have you seen this film? Handsome reward offered.” How exactly did you drop a film anyway? Did you have it in your hand? Why would you have it in your hand? Were you digging around in your bag for something else? Was the film one of a collection of objects that were dropped, that had fallen and rolled out of sight? A pen, a coin, a film. Or was it in your pocket? A hole in your pocket?
She picked it up. Her thumb fit almost perfectly into the dent, as if it has been squeezed.
It must have been deliberately dropped. Shelly got a pen and paper and wrote along the top: “Why the film was dropped”. Fullstop. Then she wrote, one beneath the other:
1) Stolen handbag: throwing away unwanted items
2) Dangerous pictures: will endanger life of the photographer.
And then she ran out of ideas, so she thought about the first one. A woman on the 19 bus (photographer, short hair, beige jacket) had had her bag snatched by a man she did not see. He’d run down the stairs behind her and jumped off as they pulled away from the traffic light, scattering her belongings on Roseberry Avenue, a lipstick, hair clips, a film. She had got off hysterical outside the theatre and been assisted by a kind receptionist who had helped her cancel her cards. A man in a blue jacket with greasy hair had kicked the hairpin down the grate of a drain. A girl in a short skirt had seen the lipstick but not picked up. It might still be there. And she, Shelly had found the film.
This would have seemed plausible enough were it not for the dent, which spoke volumes about the way it had been discarded. Almost as if it had been screwed into the palm of someone’s hand. Someone had tried to crush it.
She opened the freezer and got out two slices of toast. While she waited for them to brown a small white dog stopped at the gates of her block and gazed up at her building before setting off again. Its owner followed, smoking.
What if someone had been conducting a secret investigation? A journalist. Had he been found out? Was he fleeing for his life? He would’ve been working on the case for months, sneaking about, collecting evidence, taking pictures. And then something had gone wrong. It had all got too dangerous. He’d realised he was being followed and spotting the bus had run to catch it, pressing his thumb into the casing of the film he’d shot just hours earlier, and dropping it into the gutter. My God, thought Shelly, what the hell was on this film?
Opening the drawer to get a knife, she thought about cutting it open. Peeling the film out like a snail from its casing. She buttered her toast and then spread them, one slice with Marmite, one slice with Raspberry jam.
She decided that she would have to get the film processed. She would take it in to the yellow processing shop on the corner and ask them to do it for her. She would then bring the slides home and lay them out on her table in the order they were taken. She would lift each one up to the light and look for clues. She would write down what she saw and she would be very precise. She would write all her notes in a new notebook – one page for each picture. And she would follow up each lead tirelessly. Yes, this is what she would do.
Upstairs a child had started to cry. The heavy footsteps of a parent started over her head and made their way down the roof of her passage.
Shelly got up from the table and pushed in the chair. She rinsed the plate and mug under cold water and stood them in the drying rack. She brushed her hands on her trousers and drew the kitchen blind. Just to be safe, she put the film, in a small wooden box at the back of her desk drawer.
It was already late. She put on her white cotton pyjamas and tied her hair back with an elastic-band. In the bathroom, she turned on the hot tap to let the water run warm and looked at herself in the mirror. There were dark rings under her eyes, and oh, damn it, a new pimple near her eyebrow.
As she lay in bed that night, contemplating taking the film into the processing lab in the morning, the possibility that it might contain pornographic images occurred to Shelly. She pictured herself going to collect it. The tall woman with the grey bun and a pen in her pocket would look at her slip and coughing behind her hand, motion Shelly to the far end of the counter. The woman would push a brown envelope across towards Shelly, quickly withdrawing her hands when Shelly reached for it, as if she did not want to touch it at the same time. The woman would look at her hands and talk at Shelly’s stomach as she explained that it had not been possible to print the slides due to the, and here she would pause, nature of the images. And that in future they would be most grateful if Shelly would consider another laboratory for her, pause again, photographic, pause, needs. Then she would turn away and Shelly would have to stand, burning, at the counter, deciding what to do. Would she pick up the envelope? Or just leave it there? All the while, she would become increasingly aware of a shuffling at the far side of the counter as the other sales assistants tried, surreptitiously, to get a look at her. She would try to compose an explanation but it would sound contrived and ridiculous. Either way, she would be judged, branded by the contents of the slightly scuffed Kodak, Elite Chrome 36 exposure, colour slide film. All its images would become her moments, she would take on their meaning.
Shelly turned off the bedside light, fluffed up her pillow and rolled over.
***
Shelly had been dead for two months before he went around to the flat to start sorting out her things. He took a week off work to do it; to have this time with his sister. He wanted her things to talk to him. To tell him of her as he packed them away. He opened the door with two keys weighted together with a pewter heart, hung his coat in the hall and began in the kitchen. He wrapped the mugs in newspaper and put them in a box for the charity shop. A green one with a chipped rim, the blue one and another with brown flowers. He put aside one that said “Nutty Tart” wondering who had given it to her. A friend? A boyfriend? Secret Santa? Perhaps his parents would like it. Her tea bags were nearly finished. He took the pictures off the fridge. The blonde girl was in two of them and in one a guy, his arm around Shelly’s shoulders – Paris?
He boxed up her books and threw out a family photograph from a frame on the mantelpiece. There was no need to keep it. He had a copy of his own. Her clothes. He kept a jumper that she had worn one Christmas a few years back when they had sneaked out to the pub after their parents were in bed. He was almost done when at back of her desk drawer, in a small wooden box, he found a colour slide film and marvelled at the luck of thirty-six secret clues to his sister’s life.
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