Read Chapter 23: The Wrong Side of the Lens

The tube train rattled through the dark tunnels, its fluorescent lights buzzing overhead and casting everything in that sickly underground pallor. Mara sat with her arms folded, the cheap rangefinder camera a dead weight in her jacket pocket, Danny's words still echoing in her skull.

*Tell Robbie I'm alive.*

She pressed her fingers against her eyelids until she saw stars. Why would Danny say that? Why would he assume Robbie thought he was dead? And what did it mean that he couldn't tell Robbie himself?

The train lurched to a stop at her station and she moved on autopilot, climbing the grimy steps toward the damp London night. The air hit her, cold and thick with the promise of rain. She needed to get to Robbie's flat. They were supposed to go through the prints from Lenny's surviving roll. She'd promised. And she'd meant it when she'd said it, before she'd seen Danny's face in the crowd, before he'd slipped away leaving her with a message she couldn't deliver.

Robbie answered the door in a rumpled t-shirt, hair sticking up on one side like he'd been asleep. His eyes went straight to her face and narrowed.

"You look like shit," he said.

"Charming." She brushed past him into the warm flat. The place smelled like tea and cigarette smoke and something faintly medicinal that she couldn't place. His guitar leaned against the armchair, and scattered sheets of paper covered the coffee table—lyrics, chord progressions, half-finished ideas. "I got held up."

"Held up." He didn't press, but she felt his gaze on her back as she walked to the kitchen and filled the kettle. She kept her movements busy, deliberate, buying herself time while her stomach churned.

Danny's face. The way he'd looked at her—haunted, desperate—before disappearing into the crowd like smoke.

"So are we doing this or not?" Robbie called from the living room. "The prints won't develop themselves."

Mara leaned against the counter and forced herself to breathe. She could tell him. Just open her mouth and let the words fall out. *I saw Danny. He's alive. He told me to tell you.*

But she'd seen Robbie's face when he'd looked at that candid photograph of himself laughing. The way his entire body had gone rigid, like being seen was a wound. Danny—whoever Danny was, whatever he meant—was tied to all of that. The guard Robbie kept. The distance he maintained. The daughter who died before she could live.

If she told him now, what would happen? She thought of the Valium bottle in her bag, the one she'd confiscated. Robbie had promised he didn't need it. But promises broke. People broke.

She remembered his hand in hers on the tour bus, the weight of his confession settling between them. How his voice had cracked when he'd said Chloe's name.

No. Not tonight. Not when he was finally showing her the man underneath the armor.

"Fine," she said, returning with two mugs of tea. "But I'm telling you now, if these prints are rubbish, I'm blaming the camera."

"The camera doesn't matter." He said it simply, plainly, and she felt the familiar heat rise in her chest.

"You sound like a broken record."

"Records break." He shrugged, a ghost of a smile on his face. "Photographers don't."

They set up in the bathroom, the red light painting everything in blood tones. Mara worked carefully, methodically, letting the ritual of it steady her hands. The negatives were precious—all that remained of Lenny's work, the only tangible evidence of his eye, his voice, his perspective. She'd lost her Leica to a thief. She wouldn't lose this too.

The first print emerged in the tray, ghostly shapes slowly resolving into form. Lenny had photographed them mid-jam session in the studio, the band loose and unguarded, not posing for a camera but simply existing in front of one. Dex laughing behind his drums. The guitarist mid-solo, mouth open, eyes closed. And Robbie—profile sharp, bass low in his hands, a quiet intensity radiating from him that made Mara's fingers tighten on the tongs.

"Christ," Robbie breathed behind her.

"What?"

"I'd forgotten he was this good." His voice was strange, almost reverent. "Lenny. He saw things differently than the rest of us."

Mara watched the image float in the chemicals, memories rising like the developing image. "He saw you differently."

A long silence. She lifted the print with the tongs and clipped it to the drying line. When she turned, Robbie's face was shadowed, half-lit by the red glow.

"He used to say I was afraid of my own shadow," Robbie muttered. "His was the only mirror I couldn't lie to."

Mara felt the weight of Danny's secret pressing against her throat. *Tell Robbie I'm alive.* But what would that do? Was Danny worthy of the chaos he'd cause? Robbie was finally leaning into the music, finally letting her in. Lenny was dead. Danny was gone. Robbie was here.

"You're not lying to me now," she said quietly.

Robbie met her eyes, and for a moment, his mask slipped. "No. I'm not."

They worked through three more prints before the darkroom door shook with a heavy knock. Mara flinched, her hands slick with chemicals.

"Occupied," Robbie called out.

"It's Dex." The voice came through muffled. "Open up, mate. It's important."

Robbie exchanged a glance with Mara, then pulled the door open, blocking the light with his body. Dex stood in the hallway, wearing a leather jacket and an expression that didn't quite match his casual posture.

"Label's got news about the album release," Dex said. "They want—" He stopped, his gaze sliding past Robbie to where Mara stood in the bathroom's red glow. His eyes traveled down to the prints drying, the tray of chemicals, her hands still holding the tongs.

"Working late," he observed. His voice was flat, neutral.

"Lenny's rolls," Robbie said. "We're finishing what he started."

Dex nodded slowly. But his eyes stayed on Mara—that assessing look she'd seen before, the one that made her feel like she was being measured against a checklist she didn't have access to. "Right. Well. I'll swing by in the morning with the details."

He turned to leave, then stopped. "Mara, you all right? You looked rattled at the gig tonight."

Her heart slammed against her ribs. He'd noticed. Of course he'd noticed—Dex noticed everything, cataloguing it away like the businessman he'd been before he picked up sticks.

"Just tired," she said. "Some arsehole nearly stomped on my foot during the encore. Thought I was going to lose the new camera before I'd even paid it off."

Dex's expression flickered—disbelief, or something close to it. "Right. Well, get some rest."

The door clicked shut behind him. Mara stood frozen, listening to his footsteps retreat down the stairs.

"That was a lie," Robbie said quietly.

"Mmm?"

"Why did you lie to him?"

She turned back to the developing tray, refusing to meet his eyes. "Because I'm tired of being the one everyone watches. I just want to do my work."

Robbie was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had a new edge to it—sharp, testing. "And that's all you want, is it?"

What did he know? Could he read something in her face, some crack she hadn't sealed properly? She thought of Danny's eyes in the crowd, the message burning in her chest like a brand.

"That's all," she said.

The red light painted them both in shadows. In the tray below, another image was slowly emerging—Lenny's last captured moment, reaching up from the chemicals to pull them into a past none of them could escape.

Mara watched it form and knew, with a sick certainty, that Danny's message was a developing photograph of its own. One day soon, the image would clear. And when it did, there would be no undoing the print.