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Heating on, radio on, a bag of liquorice on the seat next to me, I drive out of the abandoned carpark, past the woods, the Dark Dunes, towards the town centre.
Den Helder is not a comforting sight in the rain. Neither is Amsterdam, but at least Amsterdam doesn’t shut down in the winter. Den Helder looks like a city where the air-raid sirens have just gone off. I haven’t been back since my parents moved to Spain five years ago.
I love cities with a soul, with a historic centre. But the only thing old about Den Helder are the people who live there. All the young people go to Alkmaar and Amsterdam when they leave school. The only people left are sailors and tourists taking the boat to Texel.
I drive along the Middenweg towards my old school. When I reach it, the school grounds are almost empty. A small group of students are defying the drizzle to get a fix of nicotine that will help them through the day.
Once around the school and then along the same route I used to ride home, past the military camp towards the Lange Vliet. The cross wind can’t touch me now. In the corner of my eye I can see the bike path.
Isabel lived in the same village as me. We didn’t ride home together that day, but she must have taken the Lange Vliet route. I saw her ride out of the school grounds. I’d deliberately lingered before leaving. If I’d ridden after her, nothing might have happened.
I accelerate and drive at the speed limit along the Lange Vliet. At Juliana Village I take the first left onto the motorway. As I drive along the canal I change into fifth and turn up the radio.
Out of here. Back to Amsterdam.
I sing along at the top of my voice to the chart hits blaring out of the radio and fish one piece of liquorice after the other out of the bag next to me. Only when Alkmaar is behind me do I return to the present. I think about my work. The Bank. I have to go back on Monday. It’s Thursday today, I still have three days to myself. Even though I don’t want to go back to work, I think it will be good for me. I’ve been home alone for too long, watching unexpected and incomprehensible images passing like dreams before my eyes. I’m starting back on a trial basis—mornings only, to see how I feel.
That’s what the doctor ordered, after all.
2 (#ulink_1b8eaff6-787d-549e-9b5b-93cd7432c0e4)
There’s no cake to celebrate my return, no banners in the office. Not that I was expecting them. Well, maybe a little. As I stand in the doorway, breathing heavily after walking up the stairs, it takes a while for my colleagues to notice me. I take in all of the changes: my impounded desk, the relaxed way in which my replacement sits talking to my colleagues, the many new faces. It feels like I’m coming to be interviewed for my own job.
I could have taken the lift of course, but my doctor says I should take the stairs more often. He doesn’t know I work on the ninth floor.
Then I’m spotted and my workmates come over to greet me. I scan their faces, searching for the one person I can’t see.
‘Sabine! How you doing?’
‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’
‘Brace yourself. It’s a mad house here.’
‘How are you? You look so well.’
I haven’t seen any of them all the time I’ve been off sick, except for Jeanine.
RenÉe comes up with a plastic cup of coffee in her hand. ‘Hello Sabine,’ she says. ‘Everything all right?’
I nod, still looking at my desk.
‘Let me introduce you to your replacement, Margot.’ She follows my gaze. ‘She’s been filling in for you all this time. She’ll stay on until you’re back full-time.’
I walk towards my old desk but RenÉe stops me. ‘There’s still a free desk at the back, Sabine. Margot’s been working here so long now, it would be silly to make her move.’
I decide that making a scene over something so trivial as a desk is not the best start to my first day back. My new desk is in the furthest corner of the office far away from the others. My eyes remain fixed on the desk I used to face.
‘Where’s Jeanine?’ I ask, but just then the printer begins to rattle.
It’s just a desk. Breathe in, breathe out.
Something has changed. The atmosphere is different. Any interest in my return has evaporated. I’d expected some catch up chats, particularly with Jeanine, but there is only empty space around me.
Everyone is busy again and I sit in my corner. I take a pile of letters from the mail tray and say to no one in particular, ‘Where is Jeanine? Is she on holiday?’
‘Jeanine left last month,’ RenÉe says, without looking up from her computer. ‘Zinzy has replaced her. You’ll meet her later in the week, she’s having a couple of days off.’
‘Jeanine’s left?’ I’m dumbfounded. ‘I had no idea.’
‘There are other changes you don’t know about,’ says RenÉe, her eyes still fixed on her computer.
‘Such as?’ I ask.
She turns towards me. ‘In January, Walter promoted me to head of the department.’
We stare at each other.
‘There’s no such position.’
‘Someone had to pick up the pieces.’
RenÉe turns back to her screen.
So much is going on in my head that I don’t know what to say. The morning stretches out endlessly before me. I resist the impulse to call Jeanine. Why didn’t she tell me she’d resigned?
I stare out of the window until I notice that RenÉe is watching me. She keeps on looking until I’m hunched over the mail.
Welcome back, Sabine.
The first time I came to The Bank’s head office, I was impressed. It has an imposing entrance in a beautiful park and, when I walked through the revolving doors into a world of space and marble, I felt myself shrivelling into insignificance.
But I liked it. The stylish suits and jackets around me turned out to be worn by very normal people. Remembering my mother’s advice that I would get more out of a few expensive good quality basics than a drawer full of bargains, I bought a new wardrobe. Tailored jackets, knee-length skirts and dark tights became my standard uniform. This was how I entered the imposing lobby every day—disguised.
Working for a multinational is not the sort of work I aspired to. I trained as a Dutch and French teacher, but it was difficult to find a school I wanted to teach at—and I gave up applying for jobs pretty quickly. During placement I’d taught classes full of rebellious teenagers and it had been dreadful.
Jeanine and I joined The Bank at the same time, when they had just set up a new trust fund. The job itself didn’t excite me. It had sounded great: administrator/office support, good communication skills and a broad knowledge of languages needed.
But I needn’t have taken out a student loan to say, ‘Please hold the line’, and replenish the supply of glue sticks. That’s probably what they meant by ‘flexibility’ in the job description.
But there was a good atmosphere in the office. Jeanine and I gossiped about the execs we were working for, we reorganised the filing system and picked up each other’s telephones when one of us wanted to nip out to the shops for half an hour.
I was independent and I had a job. My new life had begun.
After a while, we were really busy. The wave of business managers hired to work on the trust fund grew and we could barely keep up with the work. We needed more people, and fast.
Jeanine and I presided over the interviews and that’s how RenÉe came to work with us. She was good at her job, but the atmosphere changed almost immediately. She knew how things should be run. RenÉe felt that our department didn’t come up to scratch and nor did Jeanine or I. She had no truck with extended lunch breaks. Of course she was right, but we had no truck with the fact that she had a personal meeting with Walter behind closed doors to air her complaints. Walter was pleased with RenÉe, she was a worthy addition to the Trust.
‘And to think that we hired her ourselves,’ said Jeanine.
Walter felt that RenÉe should be in charge of hiring a fourth staff member. She had a good eye, according to him.
‘And we don’t?’ I said to Jeanine.
‘So it seems.’
RenÉe placed ads in the main newspapers and called the employment agencies. She got so involved with it that the bulk of her workload fell to Jeanine and me. She spent entire afternoons meeting more and less suitable people, but no one was taken on.
‘It’s so difficult to find good staff,’ she said, shaking her head as she came out of the meeting room after yet another interview. ‘Before you know it, you’re overrun with people who think that office support is nothing more than typing and faxing. Try and build a good, solid team from that.’
And so we struggled on, because the Trust was growing and work was piling up.
We worked overtime every day and often through our lunch breaks. I became exhausted. I could no longer sleep properly. I felt hounded. I lay with a pounding heart staring at the ceiling, and as soon as I closed my eyes, found myself overcome by a dizziness that spun me round in accelerating circles. I struggled on for a few months but a year after I began I collapsed. I can’t describe it any other way. A feeling of complete apathy set in, spread through me and made everything look grey.
I pull the pile of mail towards me and open envelopes and remove elastic bands. After half an hour I’m already fed up.
What’s the time? Not yet nine o’clock? How am I going to make it through the day?
I glance across the office. Margot is a few metres away; her desk is against RenÉe’s so that they can talk to each other without me overhearing a thing.
The sales force go in and out with rough copies that need to be typed up, mail that needs to be sent by special delivery. RenÉe delegates like the captain of a ship. She gives the worst jobs to me. And there are quite a few of them. Cardboard boxes to be made up for the archive, coffee to prepare for the meeting room, visitors to collect in the lobby. And it’s still only mid-morning. When I pack up at twelve-thirty, I haven’t exchanged a friendly word with anybody and I’m shattered.
3 (#ulink_0ef4987d-4dbd-5263-9f6d-a929e8d776ec)
I arrive home exhausted. My face is drained, I have sweat patches under my arms and my two-room apartment is a tip. After the utilitarian neatness of the office, my scruffy furniture seems even more tightly crammed together.
I’ve never quite managed to turn this flat into a real home, or to put my own stamp on it. As a teenager I dreamed of the moment I’d live alone, and I knew exactly how I’d arrange things. I could picture it entirely.
No one warned me that my entire salary would go on mortgage repayments and the weekly shop. That I wouldn’t have enough money left to keep up with the latest trends. When I go into the kitchen I have stop myself from tearing the brown and orange 1970s tiles from the walls. I could invest in new tiles but not without upsetting the harmonious balance of the brown cabinets and the coffee-coloured lino. So I leave it as it is. My burn-out saps me dry. I lie down on the sofa like a squeezed-out lemon.
I lived at home for the first year of my studies. It wasn’t so bad. I didn’t have to worry about washing and ironing. And in the evenings dinner was always ready on the table, meat and fresh vegetables, instead of the junk the other students were eating. Most of all, it was nice at home. I didn’t think about moving out until my parents decided to emigrate. I was nineteen when they told me about their plans, and I completely flipped out. Where on earth had they got the idea that I was a grown-up? That I could stand on my own two feet and didn’t need their help anymore? I wouldn’t be able to manage without them. Where would I go to at the weekend? Where would I belong? I sat next to my parents on the sofa, covered my face with my hands and burst into tears.
Afterwards I felt a bit ashamed that I’d made it so difficult for Mum and Dad. Robin told me later that they’d considered calling the whole thing off but that he’d convinced them not to let me rule their lives so much.
They gave me the money to buy a flat in Amsterdam and they left. They came back to visit me at the drop of a hat, but only at the beginning.
My answering machine is flashing. A message?
I press the play button, curious. The engaged tone—whoever called didn’t bother to leave a message. I press delete. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people who hang up after the beep. I can spend the rest of the day wondering who called.
It can’t have been my mother because when she calls she talks until the whole tape is full. She spends most of the year with my father in their house in Spain. I hardly see them.
It was probably Robin, my brother. He rarely calls, only when it is absolutely necessary. If he gets the answering machine he seldom leaves a message.
In the kitchen, I flip down the breadboard, get the strawberries from the fridge, pull a couple of slices of brown bread from the bag and make my usual lunch. There’s nothing more delicious than fresh strawberries on bread. I’m addicted. I think they’ve even helped my depression. Strawberries in yoghurt, strawberries with cream, strawberries on rusk. Each year as the strawberries in the supermarket become more and more tasteless, I begin to worry. The season is over, and that means going cold turkey. Perhaps there are addictive substances in strawberries, like in chocolate. That’s something else I’m hooked on. In the winter I always eat a thick layer of Nutella on bread, and put on weight.
While I’m halving my strawberries, my thoughts turn to that missed call. Maybe it wasn’t Robin but Jeanine. But why would she call me? We haven’t been in contact for such a long time.
I stuff an enormous strawberry into my mouth, and gaze out of the kitchen window. Jeanine and I hit it off immediately but the bond didn’t stretch further than the office until just before I went off sick. She came by a couple of times in the beginning, but someone who lies listlessly on the sofa, staring into midair, is hardly good company. We drifted out of touch. Still, I was looking forward to seeing her again, and I didn’t blame her for not going to more trouble. I was hard work.
Jeanine opens the door and her head is covered in foil. ‘Sabine!’
We look at each other a little ill at ease. Just as I’m about to mumble an apology for my unexpected appearance, she opens the door wide. ‘I thought you were Mark. Come in!’
We kiss each other on the cheek.
‘Suits you,’ I say, looking at the foil in her hair.
‘I’m in the middle of dyeing it, that’s why I’m wearing this old housecoat. You can still see the stains from last time. I almost jumped out of my skin when the bell went.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have opened the door.’
‘I always want to know who’s standing at my door. Luckily it was you.’
I decide to take that as a compliment. ‘Who’s Mark?’ I ask as we make our way along the narrow hall to the living room.
‘A sexy thing I’ve been seeing for a couple of weeks. He’s seen me without make-up, he’s seen my dirty knickers in the laundry basket and he knows that I slurp when I eat, but I’d still rather he didn’t know I dyed my hair.’ Jeanine chuckles and drops down onto the sofa. Her housecoat falls open a little and reveals a faded pink T-shirt with holes in it.
If Mark’s not welcome tonight, perhaps I’m not either. I sink into a wicker chair with a white cushion; it’s more comfortable than I’d expected. We look at each other and smile uncertainly.
‘Do you want some coffee? Or is it time for something stronger?’ She glances at the clock. ‘Half-eight. Wine?’
‘I’ll start with a coffee,’ I say but as she’s walking to the kitchen I call after her, ‘and bring the wine out with it.’
I hear laughter from the kitchen. It was a good idea to visit Jeanine. A bit of a gossip and a bottle of wine, much better than an evening in my flat. This is the kind of life I’d imagined when I moved out of home.
‘Are you back at work?’ Jeanine is carrying two mugs of coffee. She puts them down, fetches two wine glasses from the cupboard and places them alongside.
‘Today was my first day back.’
‘And? How did it go?’
I take my coffee from the table and peer into the mug. ‘It was…’ I search for the right word. ‘I was happy when it was twelve-thirty.’
‘Awful then.’
‘You could say that.’
We drink our coffee in silence.
‘That’s why I left,’ Jeanine says after a while. ‘RenÉe was only taking on people she could manipulate. The atmosphere had changed so much. I told Walter that when I resigned. But you know what he’s like—crazy about our dictator. How did she act towards you?’
‘We hardly spoke to each other. Or to be exact, I hardly spoke to anybody. Most of the people were completely new to me and only about half of them took the trouble to introduce themselves. I had a lovely time opening the post and making cardboard boxes.’
‘You have to leave, as soon as possible.’
‘And then what?’
‘You’ll find something else. Just register with a temping agency.’
