Read The People in the Photo for Free Online Page B

bed, I’ve just found a photo which I think will greatly interest you. I’ll photocopy it tomorrow and pop it into the envelope. I’m very excited about it actually: this time, we have the link between our parents. Do you recognise this little garden or courtyard?

    Paris, 30 August (email)
    Dear Stéphane,
    I’ve just received your letter from Switzerland, with the photocopy of the picture. Looking at it has made me emotional, almost overwhelmingly so. Your father and my mother look so young, so beautiful and – there’s no denying it – so perfectly matched. I feel I am looking at a picture of a couple. This leads me to a rather delicate question I have been mulling over for some time, but which you may find a shocking suggestion: do you think our parents might once have had a relationship? A love affair, I mean? You told me Jean Pamiat met your father during their military service. Let’s say Jean made the most of a few days’ leave to take his pal to Paris for lunch with an old friend from church, and Pierre fell in love with Nataliya? Or maybe it was Jean who was in love with Nataliya, and your father simply kept the photo as a reminder of Sunday lunch with one of his army buddies?
    I could well be barking up the wrong tree altogether and reading far too much into these pictures, of course. But we can safely say that our parents knew each otherwell before Interlaken, and well before their respective marriages too. What I don’t know is where the picture might have been taken; I don’t recognise the place at all.
    I’m also puzzled by the other people sitting around that table. Studying the photo more closely, it seems to me that the stout woman on the left and Nataliya resemble one another: look at the Slavic cheekbones and eyes. I wonder if I might be looking at a picture of my maternal grandmother for the first time, the grandma I never knew. And that thought has just made me cry. I suppose my present emotional state may have something to do with it.
    I really hope all this speculation doesn’t upset you, although I don’t think either of us would judge our parents – it’s not our place to judge them, no matter what they may have done. And I would like to talk to you about it face to face. Sylvia’s condition seems to have stabilised, for the time being at least, so I have a suggestion: when you come through Paris on your way back from Geneva, how about dropping in for a coffee or dinner at my place? It would be a good chance for us finally to meet and discuss some of these questions.
     
    Warmest wishes,
     
    Hélène

    Geneva, 30 August (email)
    Dear Hélène,
    Thanks to my 3G dongle, I’ve just picked up your email and am replying straight away.
    I’m so sorry the photo upset you. No wonder, I can imagine how distressing it must be to discover the existence of a family you have never known.
    I appreciate your concern, but you don’t need to worry about my reaction to suppositions that I have shared from the start. Like you, I think that there was something between our parents: I’m convinced they had an affair, and that it was definitely to Nataliya, the ‘fox’, that my father dedicated that portrait. Their relationship could have been the cause of the arguments and the crisis between my mother and father in 1973. Our families would have hushed the whole thing up and kept it from us for fear of a scandal. But that doesn’t shed any light on the circumstances of your mother’s death. In any case, it is unlikely that the relationship, if indeed there was one, was between Nataliya and Jean (who I’m going to visit tomorrow on the way back): he has always preferred boys.
    Meet you in Paris? Yes, and with great pleasure. I didn’t dare suggest it myself, not wanting to impose on you at a time like this. I’m planning to stop there overnight anyway, before driving on to Calais. I expect to arrive around 5 p.m. and can meet you in the evening. If you could suggest a good hotel not too far away