Fall From Grace by Tim Weaver Page B

clothes, and he was out of breath. But he was relaxed. The smile was real.
    He straightened. ‘You spying on me?’
    ‘Just a little.’
    ‘I think I preferred full-time employment to this.’
    She chuckled and ended the video there.
    Others painted an even clearer picture of the Frankses’ lives in retirement: movies of the house taking shape, as Franks first finished the donkey work, then a succession of tradesmen came in and transformed the living room; the two of them planning out their next project – the kitchen – talking about budgeting, about how it might look, Ellie always filming, which seemed to confirm her husband’s love was in still photography, not in film. There were smaller moments too. Ellie videoing her husband as they climbed a tor, wind crackling in the microphone, disguising their voices; Leonard saying something to her, seemingly having good-natured fun at her expense, then holding out a hand towards her to help her across a stream. Finally, Ellie trying to capture them both, using the iPad’s reverse camera function – while Franks pretended to take a picture of her trying to take a picture of them, using the SLR around his neck.
    This was where video and photographs were so different. Most photographs only scratched the surface: how a person looked that day, what they were wearing, where the picture was taken. But video was different: these moments between the two of them were everything I needed to know about their relationship, a natural and genuine cross-section of their life, brought alive and played out in front of me. If I’d had any doubts about their marriage at the end, if I’d entertained the idea he might have left without feeling anything for his wife, they’d been extinguished.
    This is what photographs can never give you , I thought.
    And yet, a few seconds later, my eye was drawn away from the films, back to the physical photograph I’d set aside.
    Because I’d spotted something.

14
    Leonard and Ellie had begun using the iPad in April 2011, presumably shortly after it had been given to Franks, and around the time he’d retired. As I scrolled through the list of photos and videos, each broken down by date, I noticed the same picture I’d found in the box – of the valley, the tinner’s hut and the church spire – was also in digital form on the iPad.
    Except it wasn’t exactly the same.
    The physical copy was old and discoloured. It was impossible to tell how old, but it had been in the box, lost among his other photos, for a long time. Yet even taking into account its age, it was clear that the picture had originally been taken on 35mm film, not digitally. It wasn’t an ultra-crisp image constructed from tens of millions of pixels. It had the slightly smeared, tinted quality of film – or, at least, film in the hands of an amateur.
    However, every picture he had on his iPad was digital: high quality, pixel-perfect. Every picture. That included the one of the valley, although it was subtly different from the physical version: it was taken from almost the same angle but not quite; it was framed the same way, but zoomed in a fraction more; there was frost – just not as much; and, on the right-hand side, further down the valley, was something new: fence posts. I checked the date it was last modified: 12 April 2012. The year after they retired to Dartmoor.
    It’s the same location – but years later .
    He’d been back to the valley, for whatever reason, and tried to take a like-for-like photograph. But why? Because the physical copy was degrading? My eyes moved over the newer, digital version and recalled my conversation with Ellie: We used to go down to Devon a lot, particularly in our fifties. Len loved the peace down there. In our later years, we became big walkers, and Dartmoor was just a place we fell in love with .
    There were all sorts of reasons there might be two slightly different versions of the same valley, taken years apart. Perhaps it was a place