The smell of fixer and woodsmoke clings to the converted barn as the drafting lamp casts a surgical circle of white light over the desk. Rosalind Heatherley spreads the eighteen months of preview prints across the drafting table like a deck of cards. Outside, the Yorkshire wind rattles the heavy oak door, bringing the scent of damp heather and incoming frost from the moors.
She is looking for a color match for the autumn catalogue, but her eyes keep snagging on the periphery of the frames. In the May wedding at Bolton Abbey, a tall figure stands near the font. In the June registry in Skipton, the same silhouette is reflected in a hallway mirror. By the August ceremony in Grassington, the woman is closer, positioned behind a bank of hydrangeas. She is always there, uninvited and unidentified, a quiet ghost in a dove-grey wool coat buttoned to the throat.
Who are you looking for? Rosalind lines up the seventeenth glossy print, and her finger slides slowly across the background to stop on the lapel of the dove-grey coat.
