S. Watson - Second Life

‘So is this it, then?’ His face is flushed; he looks childishly defiant. I look away, over to the desk. A couple are checking in; they’re older, excited. They’re American, asking lots of questions. Their first trip to Europe, I guess.

I realize that, while I might not know what Lukas and I have, I don’t want it to be over. I’ve felt better, these last few days and weeks, and now I know it wasn’t all to do with trying to find the person who murdered Kate.

‘I don’t want it to be. But my husband, he’s the—’ I stop myself. The father of my son, I was going to say, yet not only is that something I don’t want to tell him, it’s another lie. He looks at me expectantly. I need to say something.

‘He’s the person that saved me.’

‘Saved you? From what?’

I pick up my coffee then put it down. I really want a drink.

Ride it out. Ride it out.

‘Another time, perhaps.’

‘Shall we go upstairs?’ he says. There’s an urgency to his voice, as if he wants to finish his sentence before I can say no. ‘I still have a room.’

I shake my head, even though I want to. I want to so much, but I know I mustn’t. Not now. Now I know what might be possible. Ride it out, I tell myself again. Ride it out.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’

He puts his hand on the table between us. I can’t help myself. I put mine on top of it. ‘I’m sorry.’

He looks up, into my eyes. He seems nervous, hesitant. ‘Jayne. I get that we hardly know each other, but meeting you feels like the best thing that’s happened since my wife died. I can’t just let you go.’

‘I’m afraid…’

‘Are you saying yesterday was a mistake?’

‘No. No, not at all. It’s just…’

It’s just more complicated than that, I want to say. It’s not just about me, and Hugh. There’s Connor, too, and what’s happening in our lives. Kate’s death. Hugh’s case. It’s not an easy time. Nothing is straightforward.

I find I want to tell him the truth about Kate. Maybe he can be there for me. Impartial. Supportive. He’s lost his wife, after all. He might understand in a way that Hugh, that Anna and Adrienne and the others can’t.

‘Just what?’

Something stops me.

‘I don’t want to jeopardize my marriage.’

‘I’m not asking you to leave your husband. I’m asking you to come upstairs. Just one more time.’

I close my eyes. How do I know it’ll be one more time? I remember telling myself that once before, as the needle bit into my flesh for the second time, and then again when it did for the third.

‘No.’ And yet, even as I say it, I’m thinking of afterwards, as we lie together, the two of us wrapped in the sheets. I can picture the room, the high ceiling, the gentle draught of the air conditioning. I can see Lukas, sleeping. There’s the tiniest sound as his chest rises and then falls. For some reason, despite the path that’s brought me to him, I realize I feel safe.

Soon I will go home – back to my real life, back to Hugh and to Connor, back to Adrienne and Anna, back to a life without my sister – but perhaps if I do this first it’ll be different. The pain of her death will not have faded, but it will be blunted. I won’t care quite so much that the person who took her life is still free. Instead I’ll be thinking about this moment, when everything feels so alive and uncomplicated, when all my pain and sorrow have shrunk down, condensed and transformed to this one thing, this one need, this one desire. Me and him, him and me. If I sleep with him again there’ll at least be one more brief moment when there’s no past and no future and nothing else exists in the world except for us, and it will be a tiny moment of peace.

He takes my hand. He speaks softly.

‘Come on. Come upstairs.’

My new camera arrives. It’s a Canon, a single-lens reflex, not quite top of the range but smaller and lighter than the one I’ve been using for the last few years. I researched it online and ordered it a few days ago. I don’t need it, it’s an extravagance, but I want to get out more, take more photographs on the street, like I used to. It was Hugh’s suggestion that he buy it for my birthday and he looked delighted with himself when he handed me the package on Saturday.

I opened it later that day, upstairs, and alone, and then took it out, on Upper Street, around Chapel Market and the Angel. I tried a few test shots, and as I brought it to my eye the action felt intuitive, instinctive. When I looked through the viewfinder it felt almost as if this is how I prefer to see the world. Framed.

I take it out again now, slung round my neck, with a zoom lens I ordered at the same time. It’s very different taking pictures on the move. I have to spot a potential shot among the chaos, and then wait for the perfect moment, all while trying to stay inconspicuous and unobserved. My shots on Saturday were poor; I was indiscriminate. I felt rusty, like a singer who’s spent years in enforced silence.

I tried not to be disappointed, though. I told myself that once I’d regained my confidence I’d find my subject; for now I just need to take photos and develop my eye. The joy of these shots is in their taking, less so in how they end up.

But then, that’s how it always was. I think back to the pictures I took in Berlin. It was easy, there. The friendships we forged were deep, people were drawn to us, our place quickly became a refuge for the rootless and abandoned. It was filled with artists and performers, with drag queens, junkies and prostitutes; they came for a few hours, or a few days, or months. I found I wanted to document them all. They fascinated me: they were people for whom identity was fluid, shifting, something they chose themselves, without being constrained by the expectations of others. At first some treated me with suspicion, but they soon realized that, far from trying to pin them down, I was attempting to understand and document their fluidity. They began to trust me. They became my family.

And always, in the centre, was Marcus. I photographed him obsessively. I took pictures of him as he slept, as he ate, as he sat in a bath full of cool water that ended up looking like sludge, as he worked at a canvas or sketched on the war-scarred streets of what used to be the East. We cooked dinners for everyone, huge pans filled with pasta, served with tomatoes and bread, and I took photos. We went to the Love Parade and took ecstasy and danced to techno with the other freaks, and still I took photos. All the time. It was as if I didn’t consider a life lived unless it was also documented.

Today I’ve come to the Millennium Bridge. It’s mid-afternoon and very hot – on the walk here the city steam seemed to rise from the streets – but at least here on the bridge there’s a breeze.

I crouch down to make myself as small as possible and set up my equipment. I drink some of the bottled water I picked up on the way here, then my hand goes back to my camera. I’m scanning faces, looking for the shot, waiting.

For what? A feeling of otherness, of the extraordinary that resides in the mundane. For a long time I see nothing that interests me. Half the people on the bridge are tourists wearing shorts and T-shirts, while the rest sweat in suits. I take a few shots anyway. I change position. And then I see someone interesting. A man, walking towards me. He’s in his late thirties, I guess, wearing a shirt, a jacket but no tie. At first he seems unremarkable, but then I pick up on something. It’s intangible, but unmistakable. I feel a tingle, my senses are heightened. This man is different from the others. It’s as if he has a gravity, is disturbing the air as he moves through it. I bring my camera to my eye, frame him in my viewfinder, zoom in close. I focus, wait, refocus as he comes towards me. He looks right at me, right down the lens, and although his expression doesn’t change, something seems to connect. It’s as if he both sees and doesn’t see me at the same time. I’m a ghost, shimmering and translucent. I squeeze the shutter release, then wait a second before squeezing it again, and then once more.