Free Touched by Malcolm Havard Page B

down to a strong Americano by some boiling water. It worked its usual black magic, bringing him fully into the world. Whilst he sipped it he passed the time uploading the rest of his recent pictures to Flickr.
    He had got into the habit of carrying a camera with him everywhere over the last year. It was a useful distraction, a way of forgetting the pain and an escape from the brooding in the refuge of creativity. He couldn’t always manage the bulk of a DSLR but tried to take it when he could but many was the time he just had a compact with him. Dan found he actually liked using it, its limitations seemed to push his creativity and composition more than the DSLR did.
    Thinking about photography got him thinking about Thursday evening and the photographs he took of the Lowry. He had taken one of Tess. It was quick and very hurried, he didn’t even have his eye fully to the viewfinder when he pressed the shutter. The SD card was still in the camera. He retrieved it and pushed it into the slot on his laptop.
    He was disappointed; the images he had taken that night were there but the one he had taken of her was missing. He must have not pressed the shutter release properly or else the auto-focus had stopped it firing. He was sure though that it had taken, yet there was no sign of Tess on the thumbnail images he could see on the screen.
    Then he remembered the shots he had taken in the flat when he did the survey. They were on the compact. Some he had already uploaded and put in the report but the rest would still be on the card that was in the camera and the camera itself would be in his suit pocket. He hurried to fetch it and unload the images.
    They were the last ones he had taken and were easy to find. He found himself praying that she would be on one of these but deep down he knew that this was going to be a long shot. It was one of the drawbacks having an interest in photography; your instincts were always to exclude what wasn’t supposed to be in shot. He was taking photos of the flat and the flat was exactly what he had taken.
    There were none of Tess.
    He was surprised how disappointed he was.
    But then something struck him. Of course he HAD deliberately taken a shot of Tess in the flat, or at least he had tried to. How could he forget the guilt he had felt, the self-disgust that he had stooped so low yet had not been able to resist the temptation to do it?
    Yet it was also obvious that he had failed even to do that. He used to be a dab hand at surreptitious photography, though it was usually of some building that his clients wanted a report on but didn't want the market to know of their interest. In Moscow he had taken shots inside a shopping centre despite being followed by suspicious security men who wouldn't have been out of place working for the KGB.
    Yet this seemed to be just another thing that he was failing at.
    He shut the lid of the laptop without shutting it down and went and got dressed. He had decided that he might as well get the normal Saturday jobs out of the way. He gathered up his dirty clothes, even the ones that he would normally classify as being only ‘part worn’ and put the washing on. Then he gave the kitchen a good clean.
    During this he had an attack of guilt. He knew he should really recycle, even though this meant sorting through the bin and retrieving the bottles and plastics from the coffee grounds and curry remnants. Somehow though it made him feel better, even if it was only a token gesture. Another lesson he had learned from the increasing visits from the black dog was that just as the slightest thing could send him off into blackness also distraction and doing positive things, even only vaguely positive in fact could lift him and lighten him. The act of retrieving, washing and sorting into bagged carriers that he could take to the recycling centre made him feel virtuous. He could drop them off when he went to the supermarket.
    Which might as well be the next job, he decided. Ideally