"Now remain perfectly still if you please. You really must stand as still as possible."
She was finding it difficult to stand at all. Why did they need to be photographed together, just the two of them? Her back stiffened as she realized how close they were standing now. She could no longer remember whose ridiculous idea this had been. She heard his calm, measured breathing behind her, could almost see the fall and rise of his chest. How many more breaths did he have left to claim, she wondered. How many more breaths before a bullet dodged the man next to him and found his lungs instead, bringing him to his knees as his blood ran free and stained the earth, red as the Regimental coat he was wearing at this very moment.
She envied him the prospect of a death so dramatic, so liberating. For how long would she be condemned to mourn him in secret? Would she be reminded of him by the sunlit blue eyes of a child in the street? Would his laughter ring in her ears every time she was served a meringue pudding? No, she decided. If this was going to be the Great War everyone had said it would be, no one could be safe.
It would be an unusually calm and quiet night before the end. What would a falling bomb even sound like? She imagined it like the sound of a train thundering down its tracks, growing louder and more urgent as it plummeted through the darkness. She would know it when she heard it. She would call out to it, and it would answer her.
Months or perhaps years later, when it would all be over, children would play in the smoking ruins. A group of them would chance upon their photograph amongst the rubble. It would be charred and cracked, but miraculously intact. She felt their dirty fingers on her face, on his eyes. Would they be able to tell by looking into hers that she had died clutching his name to her heart? That in the final moments before oblivion, the flames engulfing her had assumed his shape, and she had welcomed his scorching embrace?
She flinched sharply at the crack of the shutter.
"Beg your pardon milady. Didn't mean to give you such a shock."
Her breath turned ragged as she began to shake. She felt his warm hand between her shoulders as he steadied her. The smell of burning magnesium filled the air, and she found herself praying that one of the thousands of books in her father's library would suddenly ignite and set them all ablaze.