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Peering through the window of number twenty-four, the dim lamps about the living room softly illuminated floral wallpaper. What had been a fashionable, pink-set print in its day had muddied and peeled as time had worn it down. The people hanging on the wall aged at each leap from one frame to the next. Amongst them, a once middle-aged couple sat on a concrete wall, the murkiness of the sea and sky creeping up behind them. It told a bleak story, one that could not be restored - even by the warmth of the fireplace.

The condensation dribbling down the glass slightly obscured the view of Edith,  under a heap of blankets, she rocked in her chair. She faced away from the window, the door, only towards the hearth. 

Most days it was the wisps of marmalade light that seemed to occupy her gaze. While her mind drifted up through the chimney and out into the corridors of brick and stone. 

Her terraced house had once belonged to her mother; Edith roamed free from it. Weaving amongst the network of gates and alleyways, she sprinted with Joan and Mary and John, while their mothers pegged up the linens for the summer breeze to dust them dry, all the while nattering across brick boundaries. Radios blared football commentary out open windows, husbands cheering.

The summer heat brought a thickness to the air. A thickness that clung to the breeze, scooping up smog from the local factory, the fizzle off the mothers’ cigarettes and the fumes puffed from the fathers’ pipes, only for it to  settle on the rooves and pavements, blanketing everything in between in a film of powder: their sheets, clothes, wallpaper… their lives. 

Edith inhaled deeply, out of breath from out-running her friends. She turned a corner and leapt onto the bricks to catch her breath out of sight. Perched on the wall she was like a molly cat, her leg hanging like a tail. She began to slink back along the wall, quietly. A cheeky Cheshire grin stretched out from her teeth as she jumped down to the cobble stones. “Aaaargh” she cried, and “aaaah” her friends replied. Together they burst into laughter.

She felt a cold hand clasping her shoulder. A strange old man with bushy brows and crumpled cheeks breathed down on her.

The room had been still but for Edith’s sudden chuckle; John had only wanted to smile with her. The room abruptly quietened as Edith paled. She was distressed, rocking frantically in her chair. She edged it away from the ominous figure.“Mum!” She cried.

 “I’m so sorry Edith, I didn’t mean to upset you.” The slump in his shoulders matched the weariness in his voice as he backed out of sight. A cold air flushed through the house and rippled the fire. John gently shut the door behind him. Out in the street, he gazed through his misted pane once more, surrendering himself to the small portrait on the wall that he favoured. 

Their day at the beach had been as grey and gloomy as the colours the picture held. Their beams, however, shone through. They had arrived in Blackpool for a sunny weekend on the beach that was not to be. It was overcast and wild, the wind whipping up a flurry of sand and hair that whisked across their faces as they tried to eat ice cream. The moment was captured shortly before the rain began to pour. By the time they returned to their guest house, the rain and sand had plastered their faces.

 In their cold, dank room they were able to light a fire that grew to warm their bodies through, but first, it was a shared moment of quiet. Though they shivered and dripped a pool of sandy sludge on the rug, they huddled together. A moment of mutual comfort, and after twenty years of marriage, these were the moments John cherished. The portrait was a snapshot of a faded time, a fading place he returned to so as to share one precious day more with his wife. 

John had dusted the frames, washed the blanket and stoked the fire. There was nothing more he could do for his wife. Through the glass, he could see that her rocking had steadied. Her eyes returned to the hearth, glistening in the glow of the flames, while his mind settled on the dusty frames of his past.