The Changed Figure In The Photo

From the back cover

A woman owns a Polaroid camera with a strange power: it photographs whoever a person will stand beside ten years in the future. She and Teddy grew up together as childhood sweethearts, and for twenty-five years every photo she took of him showed her at his side. Then, in their seventh year as a couple, a new print develops with someone else standing next to him.

That someone is Gemma, her friend. Teddy begins preparing two bowls of shrimp, one mild for her and one spicy for Gemma, and delivers food to Gemma's door before he will sit down to eat. He buys Gemma a lavender cushion, chats with her while driving and misses a turn he has taken a thousand times, and leaves his ailing partner at home when Gemma's cramps begin. Each small kindness to Gemma is matched by a colder distance toward the woman who once came first.

As the pain in her abdomen sharpens, she must decide how much of this she can keep swallowing in silence.