The museum club had prepared a display of local photographs. Each picture had a caption giving the place and date. Sam’s favourite showed a row of children standing beside a wooden cart, but the space beneath it was blank.
“I could write something,” he said. “It looks like a village fair.”
Mrs Dyer handed him the envelope that had held the photograph. On its back were two words: Mill Lane. There was no date and no explanation of the cart.
Sam looked closely at the picture. One child held a bunch of flowers; another had a basket. These details fitted his idea of a fair, but they could fit other occasions too.
“What if we say what we know?” he asked.
They wrote: Children with a cart, Mill Lane. Date and occasion unknown. Beneath that, they added a question inviting visitors to share information with the museum.
On the first afternoon, a visitor recognised her grandfather in the photograph. She did not know the date, but she offered to look through her family papers. Sam kept the original caption in place. For now, the empty space had become an honest description and an invitation to investigate.