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Photo Bomb

Mike Hickman

    It was your picture on my phone. I can’t believe you wouldn’t remember. We were working together on the poster for that conference. The one with prizes for researchers, although it was just an opportunity for judging and feeling judged, and I lost it at the bitch who complained about the font colour. We’d put hours into it, and it was our first attempt at anything like it. You must remember that?
    I can’t actually remember what the poster was about. Something to do with pedagogy perhaps. That was your thing. I’d have gone with whatever you wanted, because – you thought – I was as keen as you were to make a go of the whole proper researcher thing.
    So, we’re both of us – you must remember this much, I’m sure – we’re both of us determining that we’ll put in for the INSEC Conference because it’s ‘safe’ and they’ve got the ‘poster presentation opportunity’ and neither of us have to speak. If we do it together, we can support each other. We can both benefit.
    I think I might have put it like that, over lunch that time, when you were telling me about your research interview with the Dean. I’d seen how upset you were when you came out. That’s why I suggested lunch, you know. Did you know?
    I had your picture on my phone even then. I know. Sad, isn’t it? I’d taken it from the website. Terrible old phone – no internet – I’d snapped it off the screen. Would you believe that?
    By the time we were working together – in between teaching and marking and going home for more marking and doing it all again the next day and the next – I’d set your picture as my wallpaper. Is that what it’s called? So I could look at it. Whenever I unlocked the phone. Every time. Whenever you weren’t there.
    And just before we went, that last day before the conference, in your office, when we were about to send the poster to print, I’d put my phone on the table next to me. For no particular reason. Although maybe I liked the thought that you didn’t know. I liked the thought that it would be so easy for you to know. And we were talking about some research thing or other – pedagogy again, probably; maybe assessment; I see you’ve made a thing now out of assessment – and my phone went. It wouldn’t have been Sally. She wouldn’t have been calling me at work by then. And I really hadn’t thought, you know – even despite what I’ve just said – that it would bring the phone to life. I’d left it face-up on the table, like I never did – and there, right there, in front of me – in front of you sitting right beside me – there was the message – let’s say it was a message – and in the background, filling that screen – tiny, then, of course, compared to the ones you get now – was Your Face.
    You really don’t remember that?
    But you noticed the phone go. I noticed you notice, and the cold fear that I felt – you must have felt that, too. I wasn’t that good at hiding it, was I? I made some coy excuse. I put my hand out to cover the phone. I snatched it up from the desk, as I told myself that I knew – of course I knew – but you wouldn’t have known to look.
    I knew what it meant. You didn’t. You hadn’t seen me.
    You asked me if it was important. You knew that much. Maybe you’d known about Sally, too. But I got away with it. I thought. I waited to see if I hadn’t. We went to that conference – we got judged – in my case, for all the wrong things – and it was still like I’d got away with it.
    I can’t quite remember why we didn’t do it again. Perhaps it was being called out on the font colour. And the size. And the layout of the poster. Perhaps it was me being so prickly about it, but we’d done it, hadn’t we, and you had the confidence by then to go it alone.
    And now you’re out there, I see. Professor, now, I notice. And there’s your picture on the website and your publications and your bio and your email and your number.
    And it was your picture on my phone. Like it is again now.
    Maybe I should have shown you?

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