The Man Who Left My Photograph

The photograph stood on my bookshelf for eight years, so I know it the way you know your own signature. My thirtieth birthday, six of us crammed around a pub table, and in the background — this was always the joke of the picture — a stranger leaning into frame with a thumbs-up. Bald, denim jacket, delighted with himself. We called him Uncle Thumbs. Every guest who ever picked the photo up asked about him.

Last autumn I took the frame down to dust it and Uncle Thumbs was gone. The background of the shot is continuous behind where he should be: the dartboard, the fruit machine, a woman in a green coat who was always half-hidden by his shoulder now fully visible. The print is not damaged. There is no smudge, no seam, no lighter rectangle where he stood. The photo simply disagrees with eight years of my memory and everyone else's.