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I’m outside in the blink of an eye, but he still finds an opportunity to blow his horn again.
I stalk across the road. Olaf is blocking the narrow street without bothering to leave any room. I pull open the door and snap, ‘Drive.’
‘Yes, miss! You look as pretty as a picture.’
I turn away and remain silent.
‘What’s the matter? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say when you take a lady out?’ Olaf is genuinely surprised.
‘When you take a lady out you shouldn’t honk in the street like a crazy person!’ I regret my remark instantly. I don’t want to give him the impression that he’s picked up his granny from the retirement home. And he does have that feeling; I can see it in the way he is looking at me. Worse, he hasn’t driven off, but remains blocking the street.
‘You could have rung my bell,’ I suggest, more gently.
‘But then I’d have had to double park,’ he defends himself. ‘Have you seen those wheel clamps in the street?’
‘Then call me on my mobile. Why don’t you drive off? There are five cars behind us!’ I look over my shoulder. One of the drivers gets out, another begins to toot his horn.
‘Oy, don’t do that! You should call me on my mobile!’ shouts Olaf out of the window. He puts his foot down and the car roars out of the street.
I can’t help it, I have to laugh. ‘You feel at home in Amsterdam, don’t you? No one would think you were actually a beachcomber from Den Helder.’
‘In Den Helder, they might call me a beachcomber, here I’m an Amsterdammer. Do you know what they call people from Tilburg by the way?’
‘No idea.’
‘Pot-pissers. It comes from when Tilburg was the centre of the textile industry. In order to make felt you needed urine, amongst other things. In Tilburg it was collected from the inhabitants, they were paid to fill a pot. Gross, eh?’
‘Hilarious,’ I say.
This makes him laugh. ‘You’re a dry one.’
‘I’m just happy I’m not from Tilburg. I know exactly what nickname you’d have given me then. That’s what you used to do.’
‘Me?’
‘Don’t you remember what you used to call me?’
‘Sabine, perhaps?’
‘No. Little Miss Shy.’
Olaf slaps his chest. ‘That’s true! God, you’ve got the memory of an elephant. You were a real Little Miss Shy.’
We turn onto the Nassaukade and into a traffic jam. Olaf looks in his rear view mirror but there are cars behind us and we can’t turn round.
‘Shit.’ Olaf turns the wheel to the left and mounts the tram lane. A tram behind us complains with a loud tinkling noise. Olaf gestures that he’ll get out of the way soon and drives on. The Marriott Hotel comes into view.
I straighten up. I’m not dressed for that place.
But we drive on past the Marriott and turn left onto the Leidseplein. The Amsterdam American Hotel then. Damn, if I’d known that. I pull down the sun visor and inspect my make-up. I’ll pass.
Olaf turns into a side street and parks illegally.
‘What on earth are you doing? They’ll tow you away.’
‘No, they won’t.’ Olaf brings out a card and puts it on the dashboard.
‘Since when have you been an invalid?’
‘I always get a terrible stitch in my side when I have to walk too far,’ Olaf explains. ‘A friend of mine couldn’t bear it and sorted out this card for me.’
Shaking my head, I throw the card back onto the dashboard and climb out. ‘Hasn’t the Amsterdam American Hotel got a carpark?’
‘Probably.’ Olaf locks the car. ‘But only for guests.’
I go to cross the tram rails but Olaf turns around and gestures for me to follow him.
I spot a garish pancake stall with a terrace full of plastic chairs.
‘Where would you like to sit? There, in the corner? Then we can watch everyone go by.’ Olaf springs onto the terrace and pulls out a bright red plastic chair. His eyes question me, the chair dangling awkwardly in his hands.
His eyes are shining and I find myself moved. On second thoughts, the pancake place seems much nicer than the Marriott or the American. You don’t have to worry what you are wearing at least.
A waiter takes our order. Two large portions of mini pancakes, extra icing sugar and two beers.
Olaf reclines. The small chair nearly tips backwards. He folds his arms behind his head.
‘Good idea of yours.’ He looks pleased. ‘It’s been ages since I had pancakes.’
‘I can’t remember having suggested it.’
‘You did, this afternoon near the canteen. You said you really fancied pancakes.’
‘I said that I could smell pancakes.’
He leans forward. ‘Would you rather eat somewhere else?’
‘No,’ I reassure him. ‘This is perfect.’ I relax into my chair.
And then there’s silence. It’s the kind of silence that happens when you’re both scouring your minds for things to say. What have we got to talk about? Do we even really know each other?
‘How do you find it at The Bank?’ I ask. Stupid question, Sabine.
‘I like the guys I work with,’ Olaf says. ‘Sometimes the humour is a bit dodgy, but that’s what you get in a department full of men.’
‘But don’t two women work with you?’
Olaf grins. ‘They’re a bit overwhelmed by all the male jokes. It’s exactly the opposite for you, isn’t it? Only women.’
‘Yep.’
‘Is it friendly?’
‘You have no idea how friendly.’
He doesn’t hear the irony in my voice. ‘That RenÉe strikes me as being a pretty dominating type.’
‘RenÉe? She’s a really lovely girl, always so understanding, sociable, warm. Yes, we’ve struck gold with her.’
Olaf frowns then spots my expression and smiles. ‘A bitch.’
‘A bitch,’ I confirm.
‘I thought so. She’s always nice when she sees me, but I’ve heard her telling people off.’
I don’t say anything and Olaf doesn’t seem to want to talk about RenÉe. What links us is the past, so it doesn’t surprise me when Olaf mentions it. He lights up a cigarette, blows the smoke upwards and looks at the sky. ‘Little Miss Shy,’ he ponders. ‘You can’t have enjoyed that.’
‘I was used to it with an older brother.’
Olaf laughs. ‘How is Robin?’
‘Good. Busy. He’s working hard. I haven’t spoken to him for a while but the last time he called he was pretty enthusiastic about someone called Mandy.’
‘Good for him,’ Olaf says. ‘I’ll give him a ring sometime. Do you have his number?’
‘Not on me. I’ll email it to you tomorrow.’
Olaf nods and gazes at the smoke from his cigarette as he touches on the one subject I’ve been trying to avoid.
‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘You were a friend of Isabel Hartman’s weren’t you? Have you ever heard anything more about her?’
I pick up the packet of cigarettes that is lying between us on the table and light one. Silence stretches out.
11 (#ulink_537602ef-a972-5b5b-b80a-8acce7ec0366)
I’ve forgotten a lot about my time at high school. When I read back through my diaries or listen to Robin’s stories, I come across completely unknown events, as if another person was living then in my place. And yet a recollection can suddenly knife its way through my mind, a spark that lights up the grey matter of my memory for an instant. I don’t understand how memory works. I don’t understand why it lets you down in one instance, then confronts you with something you’d rather forget.
The flashback I get when Olaf mentions Isabel’s name isn’t pleasant. I see myself standing in the school canteen, looking for somewhere to sit and eat my sandwiches. My classmates have settled not far away. Isabel is sitting on the edge of the table and leading the conversation. I’m twelve and until recently I was part of this group. I take a chair and walk towards them. They don’t look up but I see the exchange of glances, as if they were surrounded by a magnetic field which launched an alarm signal as soon as I broached it.
I go to put my chair down with the others, but there’s a scrape of dragged chair legs and the circle closes. I sit down at an empty table right by them and watch the minutes tick by on the clock until lunch is over. One time my eyes meet Isabel’s. She doesn’t look away; it is as if she is looking right through me.
‘Wasn’t she your friend?’ Olaf sips his beer.
‘Isabel? At primary school she was.’ I inhale deeply on my cigarette.
‘They still don’t know what happened to her, do they?’ Olaf says. It’s a statement, not a question, but I still answer.
‘No. Her disappearance was just recently on Missing.’
‘What do you think happened to her?’ Olaf asks. ‘Didn’t she have some kind of illness?’
‘Epilepsy.’ Images from the past come flooding out. I try to stop them, to break away, but Olaf carries on.
‘Yes, epilepsy, that was it. Could she have had an attack?’
‘I don’t think so. An attack doesn’t last long. You feel it coming on and when it’s over, you need a while to come round. If it is a light attack, at least. I know all about it, I was so often with her when she had one.’
‘So you don’t think the epilepsy had anything to do with her disappearance?’
I signal to the waiter for another glass of beer and shake my head. I really don’t think so and never have done.
‘I can barely remember anything from those days around Isabel’s disappearance,’ I tell him. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, you’d think I would remember the first time I heard she didn’t come home. Her parents came around to talk to me the following day, hoping that I might be able to tell them something. It got a lot of attention, at school and in the media, but I only know about it through hearsay.’
Olaf looks sceptical. ‘You must remember something.’
‘No.’
‘The entire school was talking about it!’
‘Yes, but I really don’t remember much more. I always feel so wretched when I think back to that time. Now, I get the feeling that I’ve forgotten things. Important things. I think I knew more then than I’m conscious of now, but it’s all gone, lost.’
Olaf sprinkles icing sugar over his pancakes.
‘Is that why you wanted to go to Den Helder?’
‘I was hoping that it would all become clearer if I was there, but it didn’t work. It is too long ago.’
Olaf stuffs five mini-pancakes into his mouth at the same time. ‘Perhaps you were in shock and got through those early days in a kind of daze. I can understand that. Isabel used to be your best friend. It must have had an effect on you.’
I stab my fork into a clammy, cold pancake.
‘Last year, just after I’d gone on sick leave, I asked my mother how I’d reacted to Isabel’s disappearance,’ I say. ‘She couldn’t tell me much. When Isabel went missing, my father had just had another heart attack and was in hospital, so she had other things on her mind.’
Olaf’s light blue eyes look at me.
‘My mother thought that Isabel had run away from home at first,’ I continue. ‘She’d often had older boyfriends, even some in Amsterdam. God knows where she found them. Who knows, perhaps she did run away.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
I think about it and shake my head. ‘Why would she? Her parents gave her an enormous amount of freedom. Sometimes even a bit too much, my parents thought. They never said anything but I think they were relieved when Isabel and I didn’t get on so well anymore. Isabel could go out as late as she liked, with whoever she wanted. Her parents didn’t go on at her about her homework. They’d let her go out with a vague group of friends to Amsterdam. That kind of thing. It didn’t surprise my mother that something happened to Isabel, of all people. She’s always believed that something happened to her in Amsterdam.’
‘That’s not likely,’ Olaf says. ‘She disappeared during the day, after school.’
I look up, surprised that he’s so familiar with the facts.
‘Yes, that’s right. I was riding home behind her. She was with Miriam Visser and when Miriam turned off, Isabel went on alone. I was going the same way, but I rode really slowly because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and then I took a side street to avoid her. I rode back through the dunes, but it wasn’t as nice as I’d thought it would be. I was completely out of breath when I got home. It’s funny, the kind of thing you remember. But I’ve no idea what I did for the rest of day. I might have gone to the library or something. Or done my homework.’
‘But the next day? Or after that, when it was clear that Isabel really was missing? It was the biggest topic of conversation at school!’
