I say. ‘You nearly put me in a wheelchair.’
‘I saved you!’
‘You have to hit between the shoulderblades! God knows what would have happened if you’d tried the Heimlich manoeuvre!’ I shout back.
Jeanine stares at me speechless, I return the look and we both burst out laughing.
‘Where did I hit you?’ asks Jeanine, gasping with laughter. ‘There? And where should it have been? Oh, then it wasn’t far off?’ And we fall about laughing again.
‘What do you think? Have we drunk too much?’ I lisp.
‘No-oh,’ says Jeanine. ‘I can only see two of you, usually I see four.’
She giggles and I giggle back.
‘You’d better stay over,’ Jeanine says. ‘I can’t let you go out into the street like that. What time is it in fact? Oh my God, 2 a.m.’
‘You’ve got to be joking!’ I jump up. ‘I’ve got to work tomorrow!’
‘Call in sick,’ Jeanine laughs again. ‘RenÉe will totally understand.’
We pull bedding from the loft space and make a bed up for me on the sofa.
‘Good night,’ she says sleepily.
‘Good night,’ I mumble back, crawling under the covers. I lay my head on one of the sofa cushions and sink into an overwhelming softness.
People are talking about me. I can tell from the silence that descends when I enter the department with the letters book, from the quick glances people give me, and the guilty faces. I pull a requisitions form towards me and fill in scissors, hole punches and paperclips. I keep an eye on the clock. Do the hands sometimes stop?
A deep voice breaks the silence of the office. ‘Has somebody here got a problem?’
I swivel my chair and see a body that’s six feet four, a handsome face crowned with thick, blond hair, a broad smile.
‘If it isn’t Sabine!’ He perches on the edge of my desk. ‘I thought it was you yesterday. You don’t recognise me do you?’
‘Oh, yes, aren’t you…I mean…’
My colleagues are looking at me with a mixture of amazement and envy.
‘Olaf,’ he says. ‘Olaf van Oirschot, you know, Robin’s friend.’
The haze in my brain begins to clear. I take a deep breath of relief. Lanky Olaf, a friend of my brother’s. When we were both at secondary school, Robin hung out with a group of idiots who were more interested in practical jokes than their exam results.
‘Now you remember,’ he says, pleased.
I lean towards him to get a better look.
‘Weren’t you the one who pretended to be blind in that cafÉ?’
Olaf laughs, looks embarrassed. ‘What can I say? We were young. We’ve made up for it now.’
Close by, RenÉe has discovered something urgent in the overflowing in-tray, which she usually ignores. She turns to Olaf as if she’s only just noticed that he’s here, and says, ‘Oh, Olaf, I’ve got a bit of a problem with my computer. When I save something, I get all these strange messages. Would you mind taking a look?’ As she speaks she guides Olaf towards her desk.
Olaf turns back towards me, ‘See you later, Sabine.’
I try to concentrate on the order forms. It doesn’t work. The unexpected confrontation with a period of my past I’d long since put behind me has left me reeling. And apart from that, I can’t get over the fact that Olaf has become so good-looking.
When I finally leave at half-past twelve, we bump into each other in the lift.
‘Are you off to lunch too?’ Olaf asks.
‘No, I’m going home.’
‘Even better!’
‘I only work half days.’ I find myself compelled to explain.
‘So do I mainly, even though I’m here for the whole day,’ Olaf says.
Arms folded, he leans against the side with the mirrors and checks me out without any sign of embarrassment. The lift feels smaller by the second.
I lean against my side of the lift, my arms also folded but I can’t keep my eyes still. I laugh at Olaf’s joke, but my laugh sounds nervous to me. Don’t act like a teenager Sabine, I tell myself. This is Olaf, you know him.
But it doesn’t feel like that. Not now that he’s looking at me in that way. I try to think of something natural to say. ‘You haven’t worked here for that long have you? I mean, I haven’t seen you here before.’
‘A few months.’ His eyes wander shamelessly from my legs to my breasts. The appreciation in his expression flusters me.
‘I’ve been off sick for quite a while. A burn-out.’ I explain. Depression suddenly sounds so neurotic.
Olaf makes a clicking sound with his tongue. ‘Were you out of circulation for long?’
‘Quite a while.’
‘And now you’re easing back into it.’
I nod. Then there’s a silence while we look at each other. Why do I find him so attractive? His features are too angular and irregular to really be called handsome. His blue eyes are too pale to contrast with his blonde eyelashes and eyebrows. His hair is thick but messy, the sort that never looks neat. He’s changed. And he seems just as surprised by my appearance, even though I don’t think I’ve changed much. I’ve still got my straight, light brown hair, I barely use any make-up, just a bit of kohl and mascara, and my taste in clothes isn’t really any different. But Olaf’s looking at me like I’m gorgeous, which is nonsense, of course. He’s probably winding me up.
‘What a coincidence, meeting again like this,’ Olaf says. ‘On the other hand, everyone seems to have moved to Amsterdam. Sooner or later you bump into everyone. Tell you what, do you really want to go home or shall we have lunch together?’
I look at him alarmed. Have lunch together? His eyes glued to my face while I lift my fork to my lips with trembling hands?
‘Sorry, I have to head off. Another time perhaps.’
The lift stops and the doors open. RenÉe and some other colleagues are getting out of the other lift.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Olaf says. ‘You have to eat, don’t you? We can do that just as easily together.’
RenÉe looks from me to Olaf with a glimmer of disbelief.
‘Why
