The screen showed Ada's hands first.
She was holding the phone towards Daniel, and the picture shook when she put it down. He recognized the blue mug it had leaned against. He recognized the unbuttoned shirt he was wearing, the long scratch on his forearm from lifting a frame. It had been winter. Ada had come home with cold hands and put them inside his collar while he complained.
On the screen he said, “They're like little dead fish.”
Ada laughed off-camera. Daniel remembered making her laugh. It had felt like being useful in a way none of his work could manage.
He saw himself take her hand. He warmed each finger between his own, then kissed the inside of her wrist. Her sleeve fell back. The cuff had a loose thread he'd said he'd trim, and she had said leave it, it gave her something to do on buses.
“Again,” her recorded voice said.
“What?”
“The hand. I didn't get it.”
His recorded self looked towards the phone, embarrassed and pleased. He took her hand again. This time he looked into her eyes as he kissed her wrist.
The clip ended.
No one spoke.
The sound of his own voice still seemed to be in the room. Daniel looked at Ada's wrist now, where Julian's fingers had left their shapes. Both men had touched the same place and she had carried it between them.
“You sent that.”
“Yes,” she said.
“To him.”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked at Julian. “You wanted to watch that?”
“I wanted to know you.”
“You weren't there.”
“I know.”
“No. You don't get to say that as if it was sad for you.”
Julian's face tightened.
Ada said, “I chose it. I thought he'd like seeing you gentle with me.”
“And what was I doing?”
She looked at him.
“While you were choosing it. What was I doing?”
“Being gentle with me.”
It was the right answer and he hated her for it.
He remembered what had happened after the phone fell sideways. Ada had put it down and climbed onto his lap, nearly knocking the mug off the table. He hadn't asked whether she was still filming. He had been busy with her face against his neck. Now he couldn't tell where the edges of the clip lay in the evening he'd believed was theirs.
“Was the rest on there?”
“No,” Ada said.
Julian looked at the screen.
“Was it?” Daniel asked him.
“Not that evening.”
Not that evening. He wanted to turn the laptop over and break it against the chest of drawers.
Instead he said, “Show me what the camera took.”
Ada moved away from the wall.
“Dan.”
“I want to know.”
“You've seen enough to know what he did.”
“I didn't ask you to decide.”
She stopped.
Julian's fingers rested on the laptop. “I brought it because you asked.”
“You brought it because you thought this would help you.”
“It might help you too.”
Daniel wanted to see Ada in the room with him when she hadn't known the camera was there. An unguarded face. One moment that could tell him all the other moments were real. Even knowing where the pictures came from didn't make the wish disappear.
Ada picked her phone up from where Julian had set it on the bed, beside her brown bag.
“I'm going.”
“No.”
The word came quickly. He moved to the door before she reached it.
“You said we'd talk.”
“We have.”
“You've told me what you want to tell me.”
“I've told you things I didn't want to tell you at all.”
She tried to pass. He put his arm across the doorway.
She looked at it, then at his face.
“Move.”
“Just wait.”
“No.”
The force of the refusal startled him. Ada had said no to him before, about meals, prints, the colour of a wall. He could not remember hearing this voice.
Julian rose from the bed.
“Daniel, let her—”
“Stay there.”
Julian stopped too. Daniel felt, horribly, that for the first time they were both listening to him.
Ada put the phone down again on the bed. Not because she'd agreed to stay, he saw, but because her grip had become too tight.
“You want to watch me being used,” she said. “With me standing here.”
“I was in it.”
“Yes.”
He lowered his arm.
She went past him into the living room without her possessions. Daniel followed, wanting her to hear one more thing he hadn't found words for. The kitchen table stood beyond them with its two mugs. He hadn't put the third back out.
Behind him Julian said, “We don't have to make this worse.”
Daniel turned.
“You've got more.”
“I've told you that.”
“The old card. Copies. Everything you kept.”
“Some of it's here.”
“Some.”
Julian moved towards the landing.
Daniel stepped into his path, making him retreat into the bedroom. The bag lay open on the floor, the laptop on the bed. The brass key was on the chest of drawers, where Daniel had left it earlier.
He picked it up.
Julian watched his hand.