скачать книгу бесплатно
‘And he’s going to stay there? Or is it just temporary?’
‘I hope it’s only temporary,’ I say. ‘If he emigrates as well…My parents already live in Spain, you know. Robin and I both lived and worked in Amsterdam but then his company decided to set up a new branch. Once it’s off the ground he’ll come back, I hope.’
‘The two of you were always close, I remember that.’ Olaf takes such a huge bite of his roll that I look away as a precaution. I only look at him again when it’s obvious that the mouthful has been safely disposed of. He wipes the remains from around his mouth and rinses the rest away with a gulp of coffee.
‘I’d better get back to the grind. That was really nice, let’s do it again soon.’
‘We’ll do that,’ I say, and I mean it, despite the croquette.
We carry our trays to the rack, shove them in, plate, cutlery and all, and walk to the lift together.
‘You’re going home now, right?’ Olaf says. ‘I’ll come down with you.’
He doesn’t have to do that; he could just take a different lift. There is a churning in my stomach. When we reach the bottom and the doors open, Olaf gets out with me.
I look at him a little uneasily. I know what’s coming, that testing the waters phase. Wanting to ask someone out, dodging around the subject, angling to see if the other person is interested. I need to smile and flirt a little to urge him to take that step, and I’m not very good at that.
‘See you tomorrow then. Enjoy your work!’ I pull my bag up higher onto my shoulder, raise my hand and walk into the lobby. I don’t look back but I’m almost certain that Olaf is looking at me, dumbfounded.
5 (#ulink_42725445-1d8b-5777-9e8f-fb5ce9b1aef3)
The May sunlight accompanies me to my bike. I have a car, a little Ford Ka, which I only use when it’s raining. In Amsterdam you can get around faster by bike, especially during the morning rush hour.
I’m glad I’m not driving. I need a dose of fresh air. My temples are throbbing.
I ride through the Rembrandt park where the trees are blooming a fresh spring green. People are walking their dogs, a couple of school kids with a bag of chips sit smoking on one of the benches and the ducks are noisy in the pond. I’m going so slowly that joggers overtake me.
I feel like a prisoner who’s just been released from her cell. A dog runs alongside me barking for a while but I’m not bothered, I love dogs. I wouldn’t mind having one myself. You give them food, a roof, a pat and they’re your friend for life. They carry on loving you, grateful for every friendly word, even if you hit them or tell them off.
I’ve heard that dog owners choose the breeds that most resemble themselves and this seems right to me. If reincarnation exists and I have to come back in the next life as a dog, I think I’d be a golden retriever. My brother Robin has something of a pit bull in him.
Inside and out, we’re not very much alike, my brother and me. He’s two heads taller, has builder’s arms, and darker, close-cropped hair. Add an extroverted, dominant personality and you’ve got someone you’d better not mess with. At least other people shouldn’t—he’s the kind of brother every girl dreams of and I miss him even more than my parents.
One sunny day in April when I was fourteen, I was riding home from school along the bulb fields, rows of daffodils nodding their yellow heads at me in the wind. I thought how happy mum would be if I surprised her with flowers, and before I knew it, I’d laid my bike down on the side of the road, glanced towards the little house next to the bulb field and jumped over the small ditch which separated the bike path from the field.
Doing something like that wasn’t really me. I was scared that a farmer would come charging after me, but I couldn’t see anyone around and I went deeper into the field. By the time I saw the owner walking towards me, it was too late—he’d gone round me and was blocking my escape route. I froze among the daffodils, stammered something about paying, but he grabbed me by the arm, dragged me towards the ditch and threw me in. Literally. I couldn’t sit down for days for the bruises. I climbed up the bank, crying, and rode home. My mother and Robin were in the garden when I arrived. It took them a while to get to the bottom of what had happened.
‘Well, dear, you shouldn’t go into farmers’ fields,’ my mother said. ‘Imagine if everyone decided to pick a bunch of daffodils.’
That was typical of my mother. Of course she was right, but the daffodils had been meant for her and I’d reckoned on some sympathy. My mother has always been quite rational. A row with a teacher? Then you’d probably done something you shouldn’t have. Knocked off your bike in the shopping centre? Well, dear, you shouldn’t have been riding in the shopping centre.
But Robin listened to my sobbed-out story with growing indignation. ‘But the bastard didn’t have to throw her in the ditch did he? Throw, mind you. What a hero, fighting a fourteen-year-old girl. Look at her; she can barely sit down. Where did it happen, Sabine?’
I told him and Robin stood up and put on his leather jacket.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked my mother.
‘I’m going to make it very clear that he should keep his hands to himself,’ Robin answered.
‘No, you’re not,’ my mother said.
But Robin was sixteen by then, and tall and strong for his age, as well as stubborn. We heard the splutter of his moped and he was off. That evening during dinner he told us what had happened. He’d gone to the farmyard and had seen a man in blue overalls with a wheelbarrow. He’d stopped him and asked whether he was the wanker who’d thrown his sister into the ditch that afternoon. The farmer had confirmed it and before he could finish his sentence, Robin had hit him and pushed him into the ditch.
The farmer didn’t make an official complaint, something my mother was afraid of for a long time, and I worshipped my brother even more than before.
I leave the park and ride along the tramway towards home. My neighbourhood isn’t particularly chic but I like it, the Turkish bakery on the corner and the greengrocers with its crates of cooking bananas in front of the door. They give colour to the neighbourhood, much more than the dirty windows and china knick-knacks of other inhabitants. Or maybe it is precisely this combination that makes the Amsterdam suburbs so special. I’ll never go back to Den Helder to live.
I’ve got the whole afternoon ahead of me, protected inside the walls of my nest. Or should I go out? A walk in the park? I could clean the windows, they look like they’re made of frosted glass now that the sun is shining. But then I’d first have to clear the window seat, go through the piles of paper that have built up there and dust the lamps and ornaments. And then fetch a bucket of hot water and window cleaner, clean away the dust and the muck with big sweeps and then have it all dry without leaving any streaks. After that there’d be the outside and that’s always a real nightmare, using a chamois leather on a stick to reach them and it never quite works. I once hired a window cleaner, he came four times and then disappeared without any decent explanation.
I take a deep breath, already tired from the thought of all that hassle. I could buy plants for inside the apartment. I have a balcony garden, but I always forget to water inside plants and they always die. A couple of fake ones might be a solution. These days you can get ones that look quite real. Should I go out and buy a couple?
The sun is shining on the dirty windows. A feeling of exhaustion overcomes me. I sit back down on the sofa and switch on the TV. There’s nothing much on until As the World Turns begins. It’s my favourite soap. I can count on my telly friends. They help me get through each day. It’s a comforting thought that there are others worse off than you. At least I’m not accidentally pregnant and I don’t have a life-threatening illness. In fact I don’t really have anything to complain about, that is if it’s a good thing not to have anyone to make you pregnant or to stand by you through your life-threatening illness.
Bart comes into my thoughts. What has triggered that? I haven’t thought about Bart for years. Maybe it’s because of running into Olaf today. Meeting someone from back then reminds me too much of before, the memories are unleashing.
I try to concentrate on As the World Turns, but Bart looks back at me from the screen and Isabel has taken over the role of Rose. I zap to another station but it’s useless. The memories won’t let up. I’m getting flashbacks of things I’d long since forgotten.
I switch off the TV, pull on a jacket, get my red handbag.
Plastic plants. Where can you find them?
Inside the Bijenkorf department store I melt into the masses of shoppers. Why do the shops get so full as soon as the sun comes out? Why are people inside when the weather is so nice? I guess they must all be fed up with their sofas, chairs, clothes, shoes, jumpers and trousers, because every floor is jam-packed. The escalator takes me up and I see what I’m looking for right away: white gypsophila that looks real, pink and white sweet peas in lovely stone pots. I pick up a basket from next to the checkout and fill it with unusual greed. Tomorrow I’m going to clean the windows, clear out the cupboards and chuck out all my useless junk.
The checkout girl rings up the plants with impossibly long fingernails and says tonelessly, ‘That’ll be fifty-five euros and ten cents, please.
‘How much?’ I ask, shocked.
‘Fifty-five euros, ten cents,’ she repeats.
‘So much?’
‘Yeah,’ she says.
Fifty-five euros for a few fake branches and a couple of pots.
‘Forget it.’ I put the sweet peas back into the basket. ‘I’ll put them back myself.’
I go downstairs and glance at a rack of skirts. A saleswoman comes towards me. She has short black hair, dark-blue eyes and for a heart-stopping moment I think it is Isabel come back from the dead.
I’m rushing towards the escalator. Get downstairs, down, away from here. Outside, fast. Back on the bike, around all the shoppers. Home, back to my nest. I ride as fast as I can and arrive home in a complete sweat. Bike back in the corridor, lock, upstairs. The door closes behind me with a reassuring click.
No messages on the answering machine.
No flowers.
Only memories.
6 (#ulink_5feea0c6-9781-5e22-81fc-2bab5a20f832)
Isabel Hartman went missing on a hot day in May, nine years ago. She was riding home from school but never got there. We were fifteen. I’d already lost her before that; when we were both in Year 7 our paths began to diverge. But she was a determining factor in my life. She still is—she’s beginning to dominate my thoughts again.
From the beginning of primary school Isabel was my best friend and we were inseparable. We spent hours in her bedroom. Isabel had a really cool table and chairs where we’d install ourselves with coke, nachos and dipping sauce. We’d listen to music and chat about everything we were interested in: friendship, love, her first bra, who in class had had her first period and who hadn’t.
I can still remember how it felt when we began to grow apart.
Isabel and I were both twelve and starting secondary school. We’d ride there together, and enter separate worlds. I would fade into the background and Isabel would blossom. The moment she rode in to the school grounds there was a clear change in her posture. She sat up straighter, stopped giggling, and would look around her with an almost queenly arrogance. Even the older boys looked at her.
Isabel began to dress differently. She was already a B cup when my hormones were still asleep and I still had a helmet brace. She had her long, dark hair cut off and started wearing a leather jacket and ripped jeans; she had her nose and navel pierced.
One day she rode away from me the second we got into the school grounds, she locked her bike quite far from mine, and walked towards the others with a self-confidence which won her attention and respect.
I didn’t dare go after her. I could only look on at Isabel and the other girls from my class. They were all tall and slim and dressed alike in tight tops which showed off their bellies. Long hair, dyed blonde or red, floated around their heads or was casually tied up, with refined wisps, which framed their sun-tanned faces. They all smoked, and chatted in a language I didn’t speak.
I realised that I’d been missing something they’d all been aware of and that it was too late to change.
Isabel had epilepsy, but very few people knew. Her really bad fits were controlled by medicine, but sometimes she’d have blackouts or light fits. I could usually tell if one was coming. If she had time, she’d give me a sign, but mostly I’d see it in her blank expression or in the twitches in her hands.
When we were still riding to school and back together, sometimes we’d have to stop because a black-out was coming. I’d lay our bikes on the roadside and we’d sit down on the grass, if necessary in the pouring rain, in our waterproof jackets. After a bad attack, Isabel would be really tired and I’d push her home on her bike.
It was like this for a long time but our friendship would always end the moment we entered the school grounds.
On the day she disappeared we hadn’t been friends for two years. That’s why I was riding quite a way behind her when we left the school. She was with Miriam Visser who she was hanging out with a lot at the time, and I didn’t feel like latching on. They wouldn’t have appreciated it either. I needed to go the same way and slowed down so that I wouldn’t catch up with them. Isabel and Miriam were riding slowly, hands on each other’s arms. I can still see their straight backs and hear their carefree voices. It was nice weather; summer was in the air.
At a certain point, Miriam had to turn right and Isabel and I would usually carry straight on. Miriam did indeed turn right but so did Isabel. I followed them, I don’t know why because it wasn’t my usual route. I was probably thinking of going home through the dunes, something my parents had forbidden because the dunes were so isolated. But I did go that way quite often even so.
We rode behind each other to the Jan Verfailleweg which led to the dunes. Miriam lived in one of the side streets. She turned off and held up her hand to Isabel who continued alone. This surprised me. I’d been expecting Isabel to go to Miriam’s house.
I carried on behind Isabel, keeping a safe distance. She dismounted for a red light at an intersection. I stopped pedalling, hoping that the light would quickly turn green. It would be embarrassing to find ourselves next to each other and to have to find something to say. Then a small van stopped behind her shielding me as I drew closer. The light turned green and the van set off in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Isabel got back on her bike and went on her way. If I’d also gone straight I would have ended up right behind her and I didn’t want that. I turned right and took a slight detour to the dunes.
That was the last time I saw Isabel.
My memories of the time are a little foggy. It is strange how unimportant details remain razor sharp in your mind, while everything of significance is lost. For example, I can’t remember anything else special about that day, just that I rode behind Isabel and Miriam and how trustingly they rested their hands on each other’s arm. I can’t even remember the moment I learned that Isabel was missing. I only know what my mother told me about it later. Our parents had known each other earlier when we were still best friends, but that had petered out too, with our friendship. That evening, Isabel’s mother had telephoned mine when Isabel didn’t come home. My mother came upstairs to my room where I was busy doing my homework and asked me if I knew where Isabel was. I said I didn’t. That didn’t surprise her—Isabel hadn’t been round for ages.
Isabel’s parents had called the police right away. A fifteen-year-old girl who had stayed out all night? She was probably at a friend’s house, the duty officer had said. Isabel’s father spent the whole night combing the village and neighbouring areas while her mother called everyone who knew her daughter.
When she hadn’t turned up after two days, the police got involved. The officers interviewed everyone within her circle of friends, but because I wasn’t part of that anymore they didn’t ask me anything. I couldn’t really have told them that much, only that I was the last person to have seen her, not Miriam Visser. But what difference did it make? Since I’d turned off early, I couldn’t be sure that she’d ridden home through the dunes.
With the help of the army, helicopters, tracker dogs and infrared scanners, the whole area was searched. Isabel’s mother and her neighbours stuck up missing posters in bus shelters, public places and in house windows.
They found no trace of Isabel.
At school it was obviously the subject of conversation. Everyone had something to say about it, but I can’t remember much. Robin once reminded me about the wild rumours that were being spread: she had been kidnapped, raped, murdered, perhaps all three. And if it could happen to her it could happen to anybody. Nobody thought that Isabel might have run away. She had nothing to run away from, after all. She was the most popular girl in the school.
Teachers who Isabel had recently had problems with were treated with suspicion. As were boys she’d dumped. The depths of the North Holland canals were searched and an aeroplane combed the beach. Police motorbike officers drove along all of the walking paths in the dune area from Huisduinen to Callantsoog.
Isabel’s parents were filmed for programs like Missing and The Five O’Clock Show. After each broadcast, the tip-offs would come pouring in and people from all over the country volunteered for a large scale search because the police were not prepared to provide the necessary manpower. The search took place. Part of the army joined in. Psychics tried to help. But Isabel was not found.
I must have really retreated into my own world since I can remember so little. Finally the excitement died down. Worries about forthcoming reports, having to retake classes, the next school year and all those other cares gained the upper hand. Life went on. That’s to say, it should have gone on, but I still wonder what happened to Isabel.
Not long ago, her case was reopened in Missing. I was surfing the channels and got a shock when Isabel’s smiling face and short dark hair appeared on the screen. Spell-bound, I watched the reconstruction of the day she disappeared. All possible gruesome scenarios were played out while Isabel’s face smiled down at me from a box in the top right of the screen.
‘There must be people who know something more about the disappearance of Isabel Hartman,’ the presenter said earnestly. ‘If you’d like to come forward, please call our team. The number is about to come up on your screens. If you know something, please don’t hesitate. Pick up the phone and get in touch with us. There’s a reward of two thousand euros for any tip which leads to the case being solved.’
The reconstruction has triggered something and I’m getting a headache. I try to dredge something from the depths of my memory; something that I’m not entirely sure is there. I don’t know what it is, but I do know all of a sudden that Isabel is not alive.
7 (#ulink_25f13be8-fb92-55f3-a505-5eadc0ff6923)
That evening, I sit down at my computer with a bottle of wine, go to the chat room and pour my heart out to friends I’ve never met and probably never will.
The bell makes me jump. It’s nine o’clock. I get up, a little woozy from the wine and press the button that opens the door downstairs.
‘It’s me,’ Jeanine shouts.
She comes up and looks around. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Chatting. I’ll just shut down.’ I log off.
Jeanine goes through to the kitchen and stops. ‘How long has that lot taken you?’ she calls out, pointing to the bench top covered in empty bottles.
‘Oh, I’m not sure exactly.’
‘Not very long, I think.’ She studies my face. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I just like a glass of wine.’
‘If you drink that much, you don’t ‘just’ like a glass of wine, you need alcohol. And if you need alcohol you’ve got a problem.’
I’m uneasy under Jeanine’s sharp gaze.
‘Perhaps you’d be better off finding out why you feel so miserable, instead of kidding yourself that you just like a glass.’
Her expression is so worried that my irritation melts away. It’s been a long time since anyone has looked at me in that way, apart from my psychologist, but she was paid for it. We sit down at the kitchen table and I stare at its wooden top.
‘This is not just because of RenÉe, is it? This is still something to do with your depression,’ Jeanine says.
I nod.
‘But you did see a psychologist, didn’t you? Didn’t that help?’
‘After a while she couldn’t see how she could help me any more. Things were going better, but she had the feeling that she couldn’t get to the heart of the problem.’
I fiddle with the fruit in the fruit bowl. It is a pretty ceramic bowl that I bought in Spain and paid too much for. I laugh and tell her that.
‘Sabine…’ Jeanine says.
I keep my eyes fixed on the fruit bowl and try to decide whether to go on. Then I look up and ask, ‘Do you ever feel that there’s something in your memory that you can no longer get to?’
‘Sometimes,’ Jeanine says. ‘When I’ve forgotten someone’s name. It will be on the tip of my tongue and then just when I want to say it, it will disappear.’
