Three Children At The Lake
The photograph was small, square, and faded. It was an instant-camera print from the early 1970s, the kind that had been developed by a chemical sleeve over the surface of the print. The colours had gone slightly brown.
It showed three children at the edge of a lake.
Imogen had found it in a brown envelope at the back of a drawer in her grandmother's bedside table. She was fifteen and had been helping her parents clear out her grandmother's house in Wales. Her grandmother had died in March. The clearing had been put off until the summer.
Imogen had been given the bedside table. The drawer had a stack of birthday cards, a small leather notebook, three rosaries, and the brown envelope. The envelope was unmarked. Imogen had opened it without thinking.
The photograph had a date written, in pencil, in tiny handwriting on the back. *Llyn Geirionydd, August 1973.*
In the photograph, the three children stood in a row. The tallest was a girl of about ten. The middle was a boy of about eight. The smallest was a girl of about four.
The middle child was, unmistakably, Imogen's father.
Her father had — Imogen had been told her whole life — been an only child.
She turned the photograph over again. *Llyn Geirionydd, August 1973.* Underneath, in smaller writing: *the year before.*
Imogen sat on the bedroom floor with the photograph for a long time. She did not, at first, take it out