'My father kept a black-and-white photograph of him in a leather frame by his bed, and another next to the lamp on his desk; my mother had the same photograph under the glass top of her dressing-table: a boy standing on a hillside, not quite three years old, hair teased by wind, hands clasped in front of his chest, looking away into an unrevealed distance. He looked like both of my brothers and me, all at once. Sometimes I stood close to the photograph - I was always careful not to touch it - and concentrated on Thomas, looking for small changes in his expression, trying to imagine him in three dimensions, walking into the kitchen, or across the lawn. I wanted to hear his voice.
I knew what had happened, though no one had told me directly. I must have pieced it together from different sources, conversations I'd overheard, my mother or father describing the event to others: a horse, a road, a car passing. When people pointed to the photograph and asked me who it was I said it was my brother Thomas, and that I never knew him, he died two years before I was born. I didn't understand why they said they were sorry. I knew it was a loss but I couldn't feel it as one. He was a presence to me, not something taken away.'
William Fiennes, The Music Room, p.5.
