A House of Light [antikvár]

1 It was the middle of August, and she had been glad to get out of London. The city was hot and emptied of everyone she knew. She had started to feel like a stranger to herself, a tourist even in places she knew well. 'Didn't recognise you, Katherine' — said by the shopkeeper from whom she had bought her newspaper almost every day for two years — had the power to unnerve her. So she said 'yes' at short notice, had her vaccinations topped up — yellow fever, typhoid — and left. She spent a week taking pictures on the coast of West Central Africa, at Libreville, in Gabon, straightforward brochure shots for a hotel, recently constructed by an American chain. The work itself might have occupied one afternoon. The light conditions remained the same right through the week. Each day the same hot dawn, the sun's blithe progress until dusk, which was black and sudden. It wasn't her usual line of work, which was mainly portraiture. Some landscapes, some still-lifes, but mainly people. She was best known, in the trade, for her author-portraits, which