Shadow Sister (4 page)

There was a round of applause in the tram, but Thomas sat back down with a miserable look on his face. When the tram was less packed, I made my way over to thank him, and that afternoon we worked together on a project at the art college. It was the beginning of our friendship.

It was an unusual kind of friendship, none of the other students understood why I hung out with Thomas. I didn’t really understand it that well myself. I’d probably felt sorry for him at first, until I got to know the real Thomas and made a friend for life.

‘If you go back and process the pictures we’ve taken, I’ll take care of the reception and the party,’ Thomas said to me early in the afternoon. The lunch was over, the guests were leaving the restaurant and the bride’s curls had already dropped out of her hair.

‘I don’t mind helping you. I’ve still got space on my card.’

‘It’s fine. You look a bit tired, are you feeling all right?’ Thomas’s eyes glided over my face in concern.

‘I didn’t sleep very well last night.’

‘Well, get an early night then. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Thomas put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me towards him, holding me tighter and for slightly longer than was strictly necessary. Not that it bothered me, but I wondered if he considered every instance of bodily contact as a point in his favour.

I knew the feeling, only it wasn’t Thomas who inspired it.

I drove back to Rotterdam, to Sylvie’s, and left a note of
thanks under the windscreen wipers, then caught the tram to Karel Doorman Street. I’d have preferred to go home and settle down on the sofa with a cup of tea and packet of fudge – my addiction – but I’d promised Thomas I’d get to work on the pictures straight away.

I unlocked the studio door and went through the exhibition space to the back where I’ve got an office and a small kitchen. The kitchen opens onto a badly kept garden. It’s overrun with weeds, which always winds my father up. My father loves gardening and made several attempts to tame the plants shooting up in all directions, but each time he came back, he had to start all over again. Finally he had to accept that this garden would never amount to much unless he spent more time in it, and he already looks after the garden of my summer house in Kralingen, as well as Lydia’s, which is huge. And his own garden.

I looked over my computer screen at the garden and sighed. First a cup of tea.

I made a pot of camomile tea – I swear by herbal tea when I’m anxious – and took it out into the garden.

It’s actually quite nice. I don’t like stylised flower beds and themed areas. Just give me a garden that’s alive, even if it’s so exuberant you can hardly get into it. Lawns with a few rickety bistro chairs are not really my thing.

I wandered through the jungle, pulling out a few random stalks, and finally went inside to do some work.

For a while I concentrated so hard that I forgot everything else. Even my tiredness slipped away. When the doorbell rang, my concentration was shattered and the uneasiness rolled over me again. I didn’t need to get up to see who it was.

‘Elisa?’ Her voice was higher pitched than usual.

‘I’m out back!’

Lydia’s footsteps came towards the office, dragging a little. I swivelled around in my desk chair and got up. Lydia appeared in the doorway, groomed from top to toe as usual, with a tight
black skirt and a fairly sexy black wraparound top. She seemed tired and irritated.

I pushed my hair back out of my face.

‘Hey sis,’ I said cautiously. ‘You don’t usually finish until much later on Mondays.’

‘Yes,’ she said simply.

Then I knew for sure. ‘Something has happened,’ I said softly.

I’m no longer surprised that I don’t need to explain much to Elisa. A single word, a single glance at my face is enough for her to know that I’m not paying a social call.

‘Lydia? What is it? Here, have my chair.’ She pushes me into her place and strides into the kitchen. Within a few seconds she’s back with a glass of cold water, exactly what I need. I drink deeply while my sister stands there with her arms crossed and peers down at me.

‘What happened?’ she says again, as soon as I’ve emptied the glass.

‘Bilal Assrouti.’

Only my parents – who’ve both taught difficult children in the past – can understand what it feels like to matter to another person, to make a difference, and what you have to go through to get there. Apart from my parents, Elisa and Raoul are the closest people to me, but they’ve never understood what drives me to work in a profession that takes so much energy and
delivers so few rewards. That’s my own fault for being so open about how bad it can be. I don’t tell them enough of the nice things that happen: the flowers my class gave me on my birthday, how they sing the national anthem in the proper Dutch way, with their arms around each other, to prove that they’ve picked up something from my lessons.

When I talk about my work, the most memorable things are the bad things: one of the students punching Vincent in the jaw, or the attitude of some of the students when I wear a short skirt. I’m afraid I’ve dropped the name Bilal more than once because Elisa reacts immediately. ‘Bilal? What’s he done?’

I look at her for a while without speaking and she crouches down next to me. ‘You’re not hurt, are you?’

‘No,’ I whisper. ‘He only threatened me. With a knife.’

Elisa takes my hand, but she doesn’t have to do that for me to know that I’m not on my own in this. I feel some of her life-force and energy flowing into me and I take a deep breath.

‘Tell me about it,’ Elisa says gently.

I tell her. Every detail, every minor and major incident of the day. I don’t even leave out my own ill-advised reaction to Bilal’s provocative behaviour and Elisa listens without interrupting. When I’ve finished at last, she says, ‘Lydia, this is not your fault. Please understand that. I’m wondering why you’re here instead of at the police station. Or have you already been?’

‘No, that could have enormous consequences for the school.’

My sister gives me a look of incomprehension. ‘For the school? And what about you? This has enormous consequences for you too!’

‘Bilal is going to be suspended and transferred to the other site,’ I say. ‘I won’t have to see him anymore.’

‘Is that all?’ Elisa says in astonishment.

‘He didn’t stab me,’ I remind her. ‘He only threatened me.’

‘Only threatened!’

‘We have to deal with worse things at school, you know.’

‘And so it’s normal? I don’t understand this.’

‘I’ve never had a problem with that boy, Elisa. Not of this magnitude, in any case. In some ways, I’ve only got myself to blame. If I hadn’t looked at his crotch, he wouldn’t have flipped. A thing like that is an enormous provocation in the Moroccan culture.’

‘So what. We live in Holland, and it’s not normal here for a teacher to be called a whore because she’s wearing a short skirt.’

‘I do know that, but I have to work with these boys day in, day out. You still have to take their views into consideration.’

‘I suppose it’s easier to blame yourself.’ Elisa shrugs. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

She goes into the kitchen without waiting for an answer and I stare out of the window at the neglected back garden. She’s right, of course, it is much easier to blame yourself. If you blame yourself, you feel less powerless.

Elisa returns with two steaming mugs of tea.

‘What next?’ she asks. ‘Does Raoul know already?’

‘No, he’s in a meeting. I’m not going to bother him with this now. He can’t do anything about it, after all.’

‘I suppose not,’ Elisa says.

The doorbell tinkles and we look at each other.

‘Hi-i!’ A voice with a rather exaggerated sustained note rings out in the exhibition space.

Sylvie.

‘Hiiii,’ I imitate quietly.

‘Shut up,’ Elisa says, and then in a louder voice, ‘I’m out back.’

There’s a click clack of high heels on the wooden floor and then Sylvie Roelofs appears in the doorway. Sylvie is quite a good friend of Elisa’s, though I’m not sure why. It’s not that Sylvie is unpleasant, but she’s…fake, that’s the word. And instead of keeping any kind of distance, she does her best to please me, which is even more irritating.

She once came on to Raoul while I was there. Luckily Raoul doesn’t go for women like her so she had little success. Since then she’s behaved more normally, but we’ll never be friends.

‘Oh,’ Sylvie says. ‘You’re here too, are you? How are you?’

‘All right, thanks.’

She looks me up and down critically. ‘You don’t look that great.’

‘Why, thanks.’ I say.

‘Lydia’s had a bit of a difficult day,’ Elisa says. ‘She’s been threatened by one of her students.’

‘Really? How dreadful! What happened?’

‘He pulled a knife,’ I say.

‘Lord! What did you do? I think I would have died of fright, wouldn’t you?’ Sylvie says, directing a look of horror at Elisa.

‘The only thing I could think of doing was to leave the classroom,’ I say.

‘Well, that was probably for the best,’ Sylvie says. ‘You know, something like that happened to me once. I was on the tram and a man sat down next to me, right up against me. I moved towards the window and he shifted too so that I was clamped in. And then he opened his legs wide so that our knees were touching. I couldn’t sit anywhere else because the tram was full, so I pretended not to notice. And then, I swear it, he put his hand on my leg!’ She shudders.

‘Oh gross,’ Elisa says. ‘What did you do then?’

‘Nothing. I should have hit him, but I was completely overwhelmed. I wriggled around in my seat to get rid of his hand. Then he gave me a really letchy look. “I’ve never seen such a beautiful woman,” he said. “You’ve really made my day.” I had no idea how to react!’

Sylvie gives me a glance that suggests that now we have a shared trauma, we might become better friends.

‘Wow,’ I say simply, because I only ever half believe Sylvie’s stories. She’s always experienced everything you mention herself,
although the similarity with your own story is usually quite hard to find. Worse still, she always finds it necessary to give a very detailed account, which means that you can’t finish your own story. People like that drive me insane.

‘I have to go.’ I get up from my chair.

‘No, stay a while,’ Elisa says at once. ‘We’ve hardly talked.’

‘It’s important to talk,’ Sylvie comments. ‘It helps you get over things. I once—’

‘Another time.’ I get my bag, give Elisa a wave and I’m gone.

At half past three, I’m standing in the playground at Valerie’s school, waiting for the bell to go and for her to come running out. I usually chat with the other mothers and the odd father, but today I keep to myself.

There it is, the shrill noise of the bell and the first children come streaming out. Valerie is often the last one, I don’t know why. She comes sauntering out at her own cheerful pace when all her classmates are already on the back of their parent’s bike, or strapped into the back seat of their car. I couldn’t find my beaker, I lost my scarf, I had to go to the toilet, I wanted to tell the teacher something.

It’s not something that bothers me today, but if I’m waiting in the rain it’s a different matter. And there’s rarely a parking space near enough to wait in the car.

She comes ambling out at twenty to four today too, drawings in her hand and her beaker stuffed into her coat pocket.

‘Hi Mummy!’ she says, standing on tiptoe to greet me.

I bend down to kiss her warm, red schoolgirl’s cheek. ‘Hi darling, have you had a nice day?’

‘No, what are we going to eat tonight?’ she says in a single breath as we walk to the car.

‘I’m not sure yet. There’s lots of things in the fridge, we’ll look when we get home.’

‘I want chips.’

‘Maybe we’ll have chips then.’ I open the back door so that Valerie can climb in. She fastens the seatbelt herself and says, ‘I’ve made some nice pictures, Mummy. Do you want to see them?’

She passes me a couple of scribbled drawings that I admire at length.

‘They’re for Grandma.’ Valerie checks my expression. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Well, maybe a very tiny bit,’ I admit. I once said that I really didn’t mind and had to spend the next hour making up for my lack of interest.

‘I’ll do another one for you at home. A really pretty one.’

I slide behind the wheel. ‘What did you do at school today, sweetheart?’

‘Played in the standpit,’ Valerie says, without taking her eyes off her artworks.

I can’t help laughing at her corruption of sandpit, but her second remark wipes the smile from my face. ‘And I bit Christian.’

‘What?’ I look at Valerie in the rear-view mirror. ‘What did you do that for?’

‘He wanted to play cops and robbers,’ Valerie says. ‘But I didn’t want to. I always had to be the robber and he kept poking me with his sword, like that’ – she makes a stabbing gesture and pulls the kind of face that over-enthusiastic boys make when playing – ‘and then he wanted to tie me up and then I bit him.’ Valerie folds her arms.

‘You can always go to the teacher,’ I suggest as I turn out of the street.

‘You know what I don’t understand, Mum?’

‘What?’

‘I’ve been going to school for ages and I still can’t write.’

‘You’re only in your second year,’ I say. ‘Nobody learns to read and write until the third.’

‘That’s too long!’

‘It’s soon enough,’ I say. ‘Cutting and gluing things is nice too, isn’t it?’

‘But I’ve been able to do that for ages! I could do that in creche!’

I study my daughter’s defeated face in the mirror. She’s quick for her age, always trying to do things she’s a little too young for. I recognise that – it’s exactly what I used to be like.

‘Shall I teach you to write a few letters?’

‘You can’t do that,’ Valerie giggles. ‘You’re not a teacher!’

‘Yes, I am. For big children.’

‘Oh yeah,’ she says. ‘Well, all right then. When we get home?’

‘When we get home,’ I promise as I turn on the radio. Valerie joins in with Robbie Williams’ latest hit. ‘Sing, Mummy! Sing!’