Landscapes for postcards were his speciality now. They
were photographed in New Zealand, printed in Germany, sold in
Westport, Hokitika and Greymouth and despatched around the
world. The public appetite for the curious and awe-inspiring
seemed insatiable: huge mountains drenched with snow, rivers
spilling into waterfalls, rocks that looked like giant pancakes
dazzling with spray, beaches consumed by surf, lakes overflowing
with mirrored images. Geoffrey sometimes felt as if the whole of
New Zealand was awash in a torrent of snow and moving water.

The round album lay open like a broken dinner plate on the tiles
of the hearth. Frightful, vulgar affectation, that shape, Geoffrey
thought, picking up the book and heaving it into the grate. Don’t
know what possessed me to buy it.

The heavy shell cover opened protectively over the burning
photographs and the pages smouldered. He took up the poker
and with all his force pushed the iridescent cover further and
further against the flames as the tears ran down his cheeks
and into his moustache.

There was the sound of a woman’s boots running on the
stairs and the door of the drawing room opened. Geoffrey
turned. The first thing he saw was the dress. Her dress. Vanessa’s evening dress, soft gold taffeta. Quince jelly with cream, he’d
called it. Watered fabric, subtly hued, tight-waisted with
tumbling folds. Vanessa was at her most alluring when she wore
that dress. It revealed and concealed. It lapped against her body,
reflecting and enhancing. Music and song.

‘Vanessa?’ Geoffrey said. But of course it was not Vanessa.
The girl in the dress was very young: fifteen, sixteen. Her
mass of dark hair and naked brown wrists were a glass-plate
negative of Vanessa’s careful pale curls and kid-gloved arms.