The Photograph

I found out much later — in June, from Kwame, who had no idea what he was handing me — that Daniel had known since the fourth of February.

Somebody’s wife knew somebody at the council. It went round the estates team, and from the estates team to Kwame, and Kwame, being twenty-six and fond of me and appalled at himself, had gone straight to Daniel and said, “Should we do something? A card or — no. Not a card. Should we say anything?”

And Daniel had said: “No. She’ll tell us if she wants us to know.”

That is what he did with it. For four months. He was told, on a Wednesday in February, that the thing he had wanted for over a year had become possible, and he filed it, and said good morning to me for eighteen consecutive weeks.

When Kwame told me this, in June,…