About this story
Your aunt Emma has guarded you from the case for four years when a Scotland Yard inspector arrives while she is out, carrying a photograph your father's own camera took at the moment of the shot — and proof that five more plates, taken in the seconds neither you nor anyone else remembers, have gone missing.
How it opens
Your first remembered instant arrived at eighteen, already surrounded by blood.
Breathe slowly, Una; tell me only what remains when you close your eyes.
A library flashed into view, sharp as a photograph and severed from every earlier hour.
NurseShe can stand, but she does not answer to her name or understand a word.
Whatever happened before the shot has gone entirely dark for her.
I know the fleeing man's back, though I do not know who I am.