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He said she’d been giving him the come-on, but she’s sure she hadn’t given any indication of wanting anything more than a professional relationship. There’s never been anything like that between them. Although, thinking back, years ago when he’d first joined the station he had made a joke about asking her on a date. But it was just a joke. They’d all laughed. Him kissing her makes zero sense. He made out he was a devoted family man, always talking about his kids and his wife. Was it all bullshit? It must be.
Even though she knows she didn’t lead him on, Jennie feels the doubt starting to crowd her thinking. Had she been too friendly? Too interested in his life, in him? Had she looked at him as if she wanted more?
No.
Bullshit.
She’s certain she did nothing wrong. All the same she feels grubby, guilty almost. Complicit in his attempted infidelity. A witness to a predatory side of Martin that she’s never before seen or had any inkling of.
Picking up her phone from the bedside table, she checks the time. It’s almost midnight, but sleep has eluded her for over an hour and there’s no way she’s going to get to sleep anytime soon. Throwing off the duvet, she gets out of bed and pulls on her old jogging bottoms and sweatshirt. If she’s awake, then she may as well do something.
Jennie pads along the threadbare orange-and-brown-swirled Seventies carpet of the hallway and into her childhood bedroom. Picking up her old Nikon SLR camera, she carries it down the stairs to the kitchen where the photo developing supplies delivered this morning still sit in their box on the table.
She needs something to take her mind off what happened with Martin. And the ritual of the development process always used to feel like a meditation to her; it never failed to quiet her thoughts, even when her mum was at her worst and the grief for her father threatened to become overwhelming.
Jennie always used to listen to Radiohead when she was working in the darkroom. She finds their album Pablo Honey on Spotify and sets it to play on repeat, then opens the window to give some ventilation before unpacking the supplies and laying them out on the kitchen table. The supplies are basic compared to the set-up they’d had in the basement darkroom; there’s no red light here. But they should do the job.
Ready.
The film is half-used. She clicks through until the film reaches its end and the Nikon automatically rewinds it, ready for developing. Jennie removes the film and sets the camera to one side. The first step is tricky. Carefully, with Radiohead urging her on, she migrates her film to the changing bag. She grabs the other equipment she needs for this stage and puts it into the bag as well, then zips it up, ensuring the bag is fully light-safe.
Next, she pushes her hands through the armholes in the bag and locates the film canister, using her can opener to prise one end off. It’s harder than she remembers, but then she’s out of practice and it all has to be done by feel. Removing the film, and taking care only to touch the edges, she cuts off the blank tongue of film at the beginning of the roll, then unwinds the film and cuts it off from the spindle.
Careful not to put fingerprints on the film, Jennie attaches the film onto one of the reels. Holding her breath, she gradually slides the film onto the reel. It’s been years since she last did this, and her rustiness makes her hesitant; she doesn’t want to make a mistake.
Exhaling as she completes the process, Jennie finds the canister pipe and loads the film, using a spacer reel to ensure the film stays in position. Then she lifts the reels into the canister. Once the canister is light-safe, Jennie sets to work mixing her chemicals, preparing her developer, fixer and stop bath. She makes sure the distilled water is at the right temperature, keen to ensure the negatives don’t have mineral spots.
Jennie works through the steps to the rhythm of the music, as if in a trance: developer, stop bath, fixer. When the steps are complete, she carefully removes the film from the developing canister and pulls the film off the reel, carefully using a sponge to absorb some excess water. Using film clips, she pins the negatives to the string she’s rigged up, then sets about tidying the equipment.
She realises quickly that there’s something wrong. The negatives are too washed out and over-exposed to be able to make out what the pictures are supposed to be.
Jennie swears under her breath. It could be the age of the film, or that it’s been sitting in the camera all these years; or it could be that she’s messed up the process. She needs an intensifier to try to bring out more detail. Searching through the rest of the supplies box, she finds a small bottle of hydrochloric acid. She remembers using it a few times in the darkroom at White Cross Academy – it was Elliott’s intensifier of choice.
Carefully, Jennie runs through the process with the acid, hoping as she works that it will rescue her pictures. She’s relieved when the negatives turn out better once she’s finished, the clarity and grain of the images much improved. She can see the pictures are of people, but the negatives are too small to see enough detail and make out who they are.
Jennie should let the negatives air for a few more hours until they’re completely dry, she knows that, but she doesn’t want to wait. Cutting the negatives into strips, she slides them into negative sleeves. She could continue the analogue process and print her own photographs – she’s got the kit to do it. But the manual process will take a while and she’s impatient to see the pictures, so she decides to try a digital shortcut.
Picking up the negative sleeves, she walks out of the kitchen to the cluttered front room. Her laptop is on the sofa and her printer is set up on the console table at the side of the room. She’s pretty sure it has a scanner function, although she’s never used it before.
Switching on the printer, she flicks through the menus until she finds what she’s looking for. There is a scanning function. It’s only black and white, and will be far lower quality than a proper film scanner, but for now it will do to satisfy her curiosity.
Pressing first one and then the other sleeve of negatives onto the glass, Jennie scans them in turn and sends the results to her laptop. Carefully, she removes the negative sleeves from the printer, then walks around to the sofa to collect her laptop and goes back to the kitchen.
She yawns as she walks, tiredness starting to catch up with her. Then puts the laptop on the kitchen table before rehanging the negatives to let them dry more. Yawning again, she makes a coffee to try to perk herself up. She’s determined to go through the pictures before she lets sleep take her.
Opening the laptop, she finds the files and opens the photographs one by one. There are seven images. The first four she recognises as pictures she took on the same day that she’d taken the group photo of the darkroom crew on the sofa; it’s the image used by Lottie on the Facebook group that had caused Jennie all the angst with her DCI. She must have changed the roll of film just after taking the picture, although she doesn’t remember. The images are unposed, reportage style. There’s Elliott hanging up photos on the washing line in the darkroom, still diligently wearing his safety glasses and gloves; there’s Lottie applying her lipstick, Coral Delight, in a handheld mirror; there’s Simon, the basement key on a leather string around his neck, looking like he’s in the middle of a heated debate with Rob; and finally, there’s Hannah, watching the two boys with wry amusement.
Jennie smiles. It had been the last day they’d all been together in the darkroom together. These were the last pictures she took of her friends. Excited to see the rest of the photos, she clicks on the thumbnail images of the remaining three pictures she scanned and waits for them to appear on the screen.
Jesus.
Jennie watches as the picture files open on her laptop. One, two, three.
What the hell?
No way did she take these shots.
As adrenaline chases her tiredness away, she stares at the image now on the screen. It shows Hannah, wearing a black vest top, denim hotpants and her favourite Celtic knot belt buckle, in the darkroom. She’s preening for the camera, but her smile seems different, distorted somehow, and the look in her eyes as she peers over the top of her mirrored shades is almost manic. Jennie has never seen her friend look like this.
