The last photograph

Source: an original fiction extract.

The house would be empty by six. There were still three boxes in the hall and a rectangle of clean wallpaper where the mirror had hung, but the rooms had already begun to sound like someone else's. Saira walked through them with her camera. She photographed the fireplace, the stairs and the view from the back bedroom. Her brother Tom waited by the front door, holding the keys. 'You've got hundreds,' he said. She checked the image of the window and took it again without answering. In the first version, his reflection had been visible in the glass.

She had made a list: every place their mother had liked. The kitchen chair stood precisely where it had been when she used to shell peas into a saucepan. Saira had rescued it from the removal van and put it back. In the viewfinder it looked almost right, except for a bright orange extension lead Tom had left on the floor. She asked him to move it. He did so, then sat on the bottom stair. The chair, the light, the worn patch beneath its legs: she adjusted the camera until nothing interrupted them.

Upstairs, Tom opened the cupboard under the sloping roof. 'Have you done this?' Inside were pale squares where posters had been and a crack like a river above the door. Their mother had used the room for sewing, but before that it had been his. Saira lowered the camera. It was not on her list. Tom touched a dent in the plaster and laughed. He had once tried to bring a bicycle up the stairs without taking off the front wheel. Saira remembered the crash, their mother's furious voice, and then all three of them trying to turn the handlebars in a space too narrow for anyone to move.

She lifted the camera. Tom stepped aside, but she told him to stay. He stood awkwardly beneath the crack, one hand still raised towards the wall. 'Like that?' She said yes. The shutter sounded very loud. On the screen, his face was half in shadow and a flattened cardboard box filled the bottom corner. It was not a photograph she could have planned. For a moment she considered moving the box, then closed the camera's display. Downstairs, a van door slammed and someone called that they were ready.

They carried the kitchen chair out together, arguing about which end should go first through the doorway. Saira put the camera in her bag before taking hold. At the gate she looked back. There was another picture available: the open door, the path, the climbing rose their mother had never managed to train. She left it. Tom asked if she was sure. She was not sure; she knew she would wonder later what the picture might have shown. But the chair was heavy, and her brother was waiting at the other end.

Consider the whole source. A reader said: “Saira’s photographs begin as an attempt to preserve the past perfectly. By the end, she recognises that her relationship with her brother matters more than getting every picture right.” Evaluate how far you agree. Support your judgement with detailed references to the text and the writer’s methods.