The Girl in the Photograph

by Kirsty Ferry

  ‘Julian! Did you leave the door open this morning?’ she asked, pointing to it.

  ‘The door?’ Julian followed the direction of her finger and shook his head. ‘No. I made sure it was shut properly. It’s a wee bit stiff, so I gave it a good tug and made sure it was secure. There was a seagull inside three nights ago, so I determined to make sure of it ever since. Those damn birds get everywhere. But I did leave it unlocked, because I didn’t suspect anyone would come down here, but clearly I was wrong.’ He frowned. ‘It’s definitely open.’

  ‘It’s because we are so near Staithes. The seagulls love the fishing boats, but someone must have been in – it’s wide open!’ Lorelei’s stomach lurched a little. ‘Oh, Julian! I hope they haven’t stolen anything.’

  ‘I’ll bloody kill them if they have! I never bother locking it!’ He took off at a jog and Lorelei hitched up her skirts and hurried after him. She was confident there were no thieves around here, but she had such a bad feeling about this …

  The sound of Julian cursing moments after he barged into the Dower House made her run even faster. She clip-clopped up the wooden steps in her sturdy, buttoned up boots and came up behind him.

  ‘Look! Just look what they did!’ he shouted. He jabbed his finger in the direction of the staircase. Lined up on the small table in the stairwell, were the three negative glass plates that showed Lorelei sitting on the rock. Or, more to the point, there were the shattered remains of the three negative glass plates that showed Lorelei sitting on the rock.

  Each plate had been decimated by a shotgun. And there were three holes in the wall behind the table to prove it, along with a gun that had been tossed on the floor.

  ‘They even used my own shot gun! Bloody hell. I brought it with me in case there was shooting or hunting around here and I had a fear that I might be expected to attend a shooting party. God! What else have they done?’

  He began to storm off towards the drawing room where Lorelei knew the bulk of his equipment was – but she reached out and touched his shoulder. He swung around and stared at her, a challenge in his eyes.

  ‘They won’t have done anything else.’ Lorelei’s voice was flat. ‘It was Walter. I know it was him. And I guarantee that those are the only things he has destroyed. He hated me being a model. Said it corrupted me. Maybe he’s right. He wouldn’t want to think I was doing it again.’

  ‘What? Well, I’ll kill the bastard!’ raged Julian. ‘Right here. Right now. Just let me go to the Hall and—’ He bent over and picked up his gun. There was an ominous click as Julian cocked the thing and began to stalk out of the house. Lorelei shrank back a little, suddenly scared. Julian was furious – she did not rate Walter’s chances should he catch him.

  ‘No. Julian, please,’ she shouted. ‘You can’t go up there. You can’t go to the Hall, you simply can’t. If you did kill him, what on earth would we do then? You’d be hung or something and I couldn’t cope with that.’

  Julian paused and looked at her. ‘I don’t care what he does to me or what the consequences are. I care about you. I’m worried that when you go back there, he’ll hurt you. I can’t let that happen.’

  ‘Julian, please,’ she said on a sob. ‘Don’t go. Let me go back to the Hall. Let me get some things together and we’ll go away somewhere. We’ll go away tonight. We’ll go somewhere he can’t find me.’

  ‘Where? Where will we go? We’ve already established he’d come to Edinburgh.’

  ‘Then we’ll go somewhere different. We’ll go to London or Paris. I have friends there. They’ll help us. Or I’ll just go. You go to Edinburgh and send for me later.’

  Julian put the safety catch on again and threw the gun down in disgust. He shook his head and went out onto the terrace. He sort of folded up so he was sitting there, facing the sea, and put his head in his hands and swore.

  ‘He won’t do anything to me,’ said Lorelei desperately, wanting to believe it, wanting Julian to believe it. ‘He won’t. He has too much to lose. He has a reputation to protect and this is easiest all round. We’ll just get the first train that comes in at the station. We’ll go anywhere it takes us. I can gather some things and I have a little money set aside.’

  ‘We don’t need your money!’ thundered Julian. He looked up at her with those dark brown eyes, so full of pain, and her heart twisted in her chest.

  Lorelei dropped down beside him and took his face in hers. ‘Maybe not. But it can only help, can’t it? Let me go. Give me an hour and I’ll be back. I promise.’

  ‘What if—’ Julian began; but Lorelei pressed her fingers to his lips and shook her head.

  ‘Shhh. No “what if”s. I won’t allow them. I simply won’t.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Same for “but”s, I’m going. I’ll be back in an hour. You pack what you need and we’ll go. I’ll get the carriage and we’ll load it up, then simply disappear.’

  She stood up and looked out at the sea. Her heart twisted again. She wouldn’t miss anything about her life here at all – apart from the sea and the cove. But they were just hers by default anyway, weren’t they?

  Resolutely, she turned her back to the sea, dropped a kiss on Julian’s head and began to run to the Hall before he could protest any more.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Beach Hut, Present Day

  Lissy’s phone bleeped: a text coming through, demanding her attention.

  ‘Do you ever switch that thing off?’ asked Stef, mumbling into the pillow.

  ‘Nope.’ Lissy rolled away from him, ‘and anyway, it’s a message from Becky.’

  ‘Ah, Becky.’ Stef rolled over. ‘I like Becky.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Lissy. ‘She says she’s got something interesting for me and she’s on her way here with it. That’s nice.’

  ‘I don’t like Becky so much now,’ grumbled Stef. ‘She interrupts our afternoon.’

  Outside the sun was shining and it was warm through the skylights of the beach hut. They’d started off with good intentions of spending time on the beach after a late lunch, but the drowsy heat and the enormous pub meal had made them sleepy. So they had slipped into the beach hut to rest – but one thing had led to another and well; they were both basically naked now.

  ‘She’ll be at least half an hour.’ Lissy turned towards Stef and trailed her finger down his cheek.

  He smiled, his eyes still closed. ‘A nice idea – but half an hour does not give us much time to truly make love.’ He turned his head and opened his eyes, deep pools of dark, honeyed chocolate staring into hers. Her stomach did that fizzy thing again, but she knew he was right.

  ‘Okay.’ Lissy sighed and sat up. ‘I’m not showering though. The sea is too warm to waste.’ She slipped the ring off her finger and laid it carefully on the bedside table. She still marvelled at how similar the pattern was to the sconces in the Dower House. One could almost imagine … But no. That was just silly.

  She grabbed the pillow and threw it at Stef. ‘Catch me if you can!’ she cried, and with that, she raced down the stairs, grabbing a towel and a purple chiffon cover-up. She ran out of the hut, tossing the towel and the chiffon onto the sand and hurtled straight into the sea. She gasped as the water hit her legs, revelling in her nakedness.

  Had Lorelei done this with her lover? That mystery man in the painting? Who knew – but Lissy was enjoying herself. It was a very, very long time since she had let go like this. She ran out as far as she dared before lifting her legs and swimming a few strokes, then she turned around, treading water until she saw Stef race out of the hut, clutching a towel. He had stopped to put shorts on – but even so, his torso looked ever-so tempting and she immediately started swimming inland again, just to be near him.

  She didn’t care that her hair was plastered to her head, or that she didn’t have a scrap of make-up on, or that the salt water was playing havoc with her hairstyle. Instead of the sleek, dark bob that she straightened carefully every morning, her natural waves were kinking in, and the
ends would curl up once it all dried in the sunshine. It felt good to find herself again.

  Twenty minutes later, she spotted a lone figure trekking down the path towards the beach. She could tell by the dark hair and the slim shape it was Becky. Her friend was also lugging something that looked like a portfolio with her, which Lissy assumed she had pilfered from Jon’s studio.

  ‘You were right – we wouldn’t have had much time,’ she said to Stef.

  ‘We’ll have plenty of time after she has left,’ he said, flashing that to-die-for smile.

  ‘Well, just let me out of this water before Becky sees anything she shouldn’t!’ Lissy laughed, ducking under Stef’s arm, and swimming quickly to the shore.

  She splashed onto the sand and pulled her cover-up on without even bothering to dry herself. The filmy material clung to her, but that was better than Becky seeing her stark naked.

  Becky waved as she saw Lissy on the beach. She shifted the portfolio onto her other shoulder and picked her way down the path. Lissy walked forward to meet her, curious to see what she had brought.

  ‘Hey Lissy!’ Becky grinned. ‘Having fun?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Where’s Grace?’ She looked around as if the child would pop out of nowhere.

  ‘At the studio with Jon. She’s really grumpy today and I didn’t think you could give this,’ she patted the portfolio, ‘your full attention with her around. Don’t worry, we’ll bring her tomorrow. Oh!’ She put her hand on Lissy’s forearm. ‘Did Cori send you the scan photo of her baby? Isn’t it wonderful?’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘I think it’s a girl.’

  ‘Wonderful – but I hope it’s not giving you ideas,’ said Lissy; a little bit of her perhaps hoping that it was giving her ideas. ‘Please say you’re not going to get pregnant as well. I couldn’t cope with another Grace.’

  ‘What? Me? Why ever not? Grace would love a little sister or brother, and you know they’re so cute when they’re babies – what? Stop staring at me like that!’ Becky looked from Lissy to Stef and back again and grinned. ‘Grace wants to know when you two will have a baby as well! Isn’t that funny? I told her you were going to get married and she said people who lived together had babies and would you have one soon please. It’ll be so lovely. Your children will need plenty of cousins, you know. I’ll have to have words with Jon and we’ll have to get onto it…’

  ‘You’re an awful person!’ Lissy shuddered theatrically, but she was smiling nonetheless. ‘Stop it. Right now!’

  ‘Grazia will be the first to know if it ever happens for us,’ promised Stef with a grin. ‘So what have you here for my fiancée?’ He smiled at Lissy, who could feel herself turning bright red. Fiancée. She’d been many things, but it was the first time she’d been a fiancée.

  ‘Oh, all right. This is just something I thought you’d like to see. Don’t ask me how I got it. Just know that I have sources.’ She laid the folder down on the sand, sitting cross-legged next to it. ‘It has to go back, but,’ she looked up at Stef again and nodded towards him, ‘I thought you could take a photograph of it. We’ll pretend we don’t know the meaning of copyright, yeah?’

  ‘Oooh, I’m intrigued.’ Lissy sat down in front of Becky. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well – Simon spotted it in the Tate archives.’ She waved her hand in one of those dismissive gestures she was so good at. ‘And it just so happened that it was earmarked to be sent up here to Whitby. There’s an exhibition running at the Pannett Gallery—’

  ‘Pannett Gallery!’ interrupted Lissy. ‘Ugh. The Hand of Glory.’

  ‘The very same,’ agreed Becky, ‘said to be the severed hand of a felon, taken from his body when he was on the gallows; used also to aid and abet burglaries by allegedly inducing comas into the residents of a home.’ Becky’s eyes lit up again.

  ‘I hate the way you seem to enjoy that image.’ Lissy looked at Becky in horror. ‘It’s disgusting.’

  ‘But it’s history. And you love history.’

  ‘I don’t like severed hands.’ Lissy folded her arms and compressed her mouth into a small, tight line.

  ‘Okay. So don’t go into the severed hand gallery then. Anyway. As I was saying, there is going to be an exhibition there.’ Becky bent forward, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear then going to work on the zipper. ‘And it’s going to be about the Staithes Group of artists. It will have a smattering of Pre-Raphaelite portraiture, and some Julia Margaret Cameron photographs. Aha – that got your attention, didn’t it? So, this little beauty slipped through the net, as it were. And it took, shall we say, a little diversion to our studio. And no,’ she held up her hand and shook her head. ‘Don’t ask how. If I tell you, I’ll be forced to kill you.’

  Lissy loved a mystery. ‘You have to tell me.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Becky held her stare. ‘I really can’t. So as I say, this little beauty was misinterpreted—’

  ‘You never said that,’ interrupted Lissy, jumping on the words. ‘I don’t even know what it is, never mind how it was misinterpreted.’

  Becky ignored her. Lissy didn’t know whether it was by accident or design, but she was inclined to go with the second. This, then, was potentially Becky getting her own back. There weren’t often things like this that Becky knew something about and Lissy didn’t, and the suspense was knotting her stomach up.

  ‘The dates on what I have here are all wrong for what they originally thought it was,’ continued Becky. ‘Cameron died in Ceylon in 1879. She moved there in 1875 and she didn’t take many pictures in her later years because she couldn’t get the supplies. All of her photographs were copywritten and she kept records on each and every one of them. What I have here, had no records.’

  With a gigantic flourish, Becky ripped the zipper open and folded the portfolio out.

  ‘What is it?’ Lissy bounced up and was on her hands and knees before she was really aware of it. ‘Who is she?’

  It was a black and white photograph of a woman sitting on a rock, her long, dark hair blowing out of its intricate plait in the breeze behind her. She was dressed in a mediaeval style and had her arms wrapped around her knees. The photographer had caught her just as she turned her head and faced the camera.

  ‘Ohhh,’ said Stef. ‘Very nice. I wonder what the exposure time was?’

  Stef was ever the technical guru. But he had a point. Even Lissy knew that the lady must have smiled at the photographer for quite a while, given the fact that most old photographs depicted grumpy-looking people who had to hold that expression for a good few minutes. Hence, they rarely smiled. And what a gem it was to find an old photograph of Victorians and Edwardians smiling – they did exist. But she had never seen them in reality, like she saw this one.

  ‘See the rocks?’ asked Becky, her voice breaking into Lissy’s thoughts. ‘Look.’ She pointed out over the cove at the collection of rocks Stef had taken Lissy’s Miranda photograph on. ‘Can you see the similarity?’

  ‘They’re identical,’ said Lissy. ‘But what’s that got to do with dates?’

  Becky gently pushed Lissy’s hand away as she tried to pick up the photograph. ‘In the late 1890s there was a terrific storm out here. It broke down the defences of the cove – prior to that, there was a private jetty leading out from your Dower House.’

  ‘So,’ said Lissy, suddenly understanding, ‘this picture has to be from later than the 1890s.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Becky. ‘And it gets better. The back of the photograph has something interesting on it. It says LS by JMC. An easy mistake to make, yes, if you’re looking for Cameron shots?’

  Lissy nodded; she knew her eyes must be round as saucers by now. ‘LS. It has to be Lorelei Scarsdale. It simply has to be. Dammit! Who the hell is JMC then?’

  She looked at Becky as if her sister-in-law could tell her.

  And apparently, she could.

  ‘Julian MacDonald Cooper. There are a few pictures of his left in private collections around the world. He never made it particularly big, but he did wel
l enough. There are some invoices and things with certain pieces of his work, giving a North Yorkshire dealer’s address around about this time. He did a lot of work on the Staithes Group, especially when the Group began to fracture near the end. That’s who the current experts think this guy is anyway. It’s a long shot but,’ she shrugged her shoulders and looked at Lissy, ‘I hope it helps. And the rumour is that he fell in love with your Lorelei Scarsdale, but much of it is lost to history, unfortunately. It was probably just a summer fling, but it’s a link, anyway. I think his great-grandson lives down south somewhere, and he’s the one who verified this work could be Cooper’s, when they started to look at it more closely.’

  ‘Becky!’ Lissy threw her arms around Becky. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ She sat back, knowing she had a ridiculous smile on her face. She could feel her cheeks almost splitting with it. ‘Julian. He’s called Julian,’ she told Stef.

  ‘I’m sorry he is not a romantic smuggler type for you to lust after.’ He squeezed her shoulder. ‘You thought he was.’

  ‘I’m not writing him off as un-smugglerish.’ Lissy grinned. ‘It was just a theory I had. Why else would she have lights in her windows to guide him in?’

  ‘So they could have privacy, perhaps? So he could come and visit under the guise of being a smuggler?’ suggested Stef. ‘It was maybe less dangerous to use that cover story? We will never know the truth of it. Perhaps they just used to light the lamps so they knew the other was thinking of them.’

  ‘I like that idea.’ Lissy turned back to the picture and stared at it. ‘I love this story. I haven’t found any pictures of her at all before this one. But him,’ she pointed to the picture, ‘I think we do perhaps know what he looked like.’

  ‘The watercolour?’ asked Stef. ‘Very possibly.’

  ‘Yes. The watercolour. And other – stuff. You know what I’m talking about Stef. But I’m almost positive.’

  ‘He doesn’t scare you now?’ Stef smiled at her.

  Lissy shook her head. ‘No. I’ve given it a lot of thought. Nobody in love could have ever been scary. But I think their stars must have burned very, very brightly to leave their memories here for so long.’