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.
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
