The Photograph

The photograph caught Talia at Edvard’s kitchen window, phone in her hand, laughing while he made tea beside her. By morning three newspapers had printed it beneath three versions of the same question: who was the woman beside the prince?

The image was not intimate in any way she could prove to a stranger. That was the trouble. It held a moment in which she had felt entirely herself, then returned it to her as evidence of a role she had never accepted. One caption called her a palace interpreter. Another implied that Edvard had retained her after the summit. A third quoted her correction of article six and asked whether she had been rewarded for it. The photographs did not lie. The sentences around them did.

She put the phone face down and returned to the regional commission’s interview questions. She had prepared an answer about her work in…