Beneath the Earth (21 page)

At the top of the house you find yourself more engaged with history. You wander through the room that once belonged to Anne, the walls decorated with pictures of film stars and the young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret-Rose. You imagine her taping these pictures to the wall and wondering what life must be like in Windsor Castle. You assume that the Queen has visited this building at some point in her life, perhaps more than once, and wonder what passed through her mind when she discovered her own likeness there. Did she question why she had been allowed to live a long and productive life while Anne, three years her junior, did not survive her teenage years? Did she wonder which of their names would endure over the centuries ahead? You find the ordinary things almost unbearably moving – a sink, a toilet, the bookcase that hides the entrance to the annex where the Franks and their friends were hidden before their capture. Finally you emerge into a long room where pages from the diary, the original diary, are on display hidden beneath glass cases. The children march by, barely glancing in, but you lean forward to examine the handwriting – it's neat and refined – and imagine the young girl faithfully recording her thoughts and longings. You notice Sarah standing next to a tall man with a Van Dyck beard; he is showing her something in a book that he holds and she's looking at it closely before she nods and smiles at him. He says something in reply before moving on and a group of you gather before a television screen and watch as an elderly woman recounts how she knew the Franks, how Anne was once a friend of hers. She tells a story of how she brought food to the family and kept their secret. She wonders who it was who betrayed them. To this day, she still doesn't know. Her face bears an expression of incredulity that someone close to her, perhaps, committed the awful act and you wonder whether she has spent her entire life with friendship and love undermined by suspicion. You look around and think of the children – Anne, her sister Margot, Peter van Pels – confined together within these walls for two years, fearing their discovery, and a crescendo of emotion builds inside you as you consider their fate. An elderly couple with a distinctive Jewish aspect hold each other tightly and the woman removes a fine lace handkerchief from her handbag and dabs at her tears. She does it so elegantly that you are moved by this too. You can tell that she was once very beautiful and then realize that she still is. The lady on the screen is replaced by a documentary – crowds on the streets of Amsterdam, members of the Wehrmacht marching along the canals while young, handsome soldiers wave towards the camera. You watch images of Anne and her family pass by, hear of how Otto saved the diary after their capture, learn of the fate that awaited them at Auschwitz.

And then a phone goes off.

There is an audible sigh from several quarters of the room and a few heads turn, including yours. The ring tone is deafening, an irritating song designed to make people laugh, and it only gets louder as the phone is fished out of someone's pocket. It's the American girl. The one with the chewing gum. You stare at her, willing her to silence the phone, but no, she answers it. She speaks into it. She declares in a loud voice that she is in someone called Anne Frank's house, that the guidebook said they should see it, but it's like a total waste of time. She says that she's hungry. She says that she's still hungover. She asks whether someone called James has said anything about what happened last night.

The elderly Jewish gentleman walks over and taps her on the shoulder. She turns to him, outraged at the interruption.

‘Please,' he says quietly, smiling a little to show that he means her no harm. ‘Your phone.'

‘I'm on a call,' she snaps, looking at him as if she cannot believe his audacity at speaking to her.

‘Please,' he repeats, his smile fading. ‘You should not do this. Think of where you are.'

‘Oh my God,' she says. ‘Will you
please
stop talking to me?'

She waves him away as if he's unworthy of her attention before returning to her conversation. He turns and walks back to his wife slowly, colour in his cheeks now, unable to meet her eyes.

‘So disrespectful,' says his wife, shaking her head.

You stride over and take the phone out of the girl's hands in a quick gesture, no force needed. You have it in your grip before she can even realize what's going on. And then you make your way to the window, which is slightly open to let in the air, and throw it out. You would love to fling it into the canal in front of you, it would be a far more dramatic gesture, but there is not enough space in the gap for you to be able to do that. Instead it falls four floors to the ground below, where you imagine you can hear it smash into a hundred pieces. Your first thought is that you hope it didn't hit anyone.

The only sound in the room as you turn around is the voice of the lady on the television screen, telling her story once again. She is on a loop, recounting her memories over and over, day after day, year after year without end. Everyone is looking at you. Most of them are smiling. Some look anxious. Sarah is watching the American girl, who now lets out a roar of anger as she advances upon you.

‘What the fuck?' she cries. ‘I'm an American citizen!'

She pulls an arm back as if to strike you – you think she means to push you through the window – but before she can succeed, your hand has become a fist and you lash out to punch her in the face, striking her directly on the nose. She's knocked off her feet as a fountain of blood springs from her nostrils and she stumbles to the floor clumsily. The room gasps, the schoolchildren scatter, your former allies look at you in horror and things go blurry for you as you find yourself smothered by three or four bodies that have piled on top of you. It seems the girl has friends. Male friends. Also Americans and utterly outraged at this assault upon their blessed nation. You see Sarah disappear down the staircase as they begin their assault and your body tenses as you make no move to resist their punches.

Your first thought was that she must have been drunk. But it was late afternoon, school had only just let out for the day, and who is already intoxicated at three o'clock in the afternoon? She claimed that she hadn't seen him, that he'd stepped out on to the road without looking left or right, but the forensic team quickly established that this was impossible. Her car was halfway on to the pavement, after all, and he was beneath it, his lower torso crushed beneath her suspension.

You asked many questions of the doctors afterwards and they were loath to give you answers, claiming that most of it would be too upsetting for you to hear. However, you insisted. They told you that it was very unlikely that Billy would have felt anything; the car had crashed into him before he would have known what was happening. And when he was under there, in those last few minutes while he was still alive, he would have been too deeply in shock for his body to have processed the concept of pain.

An old man held his hand as he died. He was walking home from a DIY shop with a packet of light bulbs and had seen the entire thing. He was an important witness. He sat on the pavement with your son's hand in his own and told him that he wouldn't have to do any homework that evening, that everyone would understand if he took a night off. He told you afterwards that Billy said ‘Daddy' over and over and that although he could not move his head, his eyes were darting left and right in search of you.

George, red-haired George, miraculously escaped injury. He'd been walking closest to the wall and the car just grazed him, lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing to the ground. As the old man held Billy's hand, as your son died, George made his way to a nearby bench and sat there weeping. No one comforted him, apparently, as they were all too concerned for Billy. This has always bothered you. You worry about George. You worry about the effect that this experience will have on him in later life.

When the ambulance arrived, blood was seeping from Billy's mouth and he was gasping for air. His eyes locked on the old man's face and you were told afterwards that his grip was very tight, tighter than one would expect from a seven-year-old boy, but then it gradually loosened and went slack as his breathing slowed down and his short life came to an end. The paramedics laid a blanket over him and attended to the driver of the car.

She was a few years younger than you, in her late twenties, but already had three children, the youngest of whom, a baby, was in a car seat in the back. When she murdered your son, she was talking on her mobile phone, chatting with a friend about an arrangement they had made for drinks and dinner the following night – a Friday – and they were coordinating their outfits. Her friend, when questioned, remembered a great deal about the conversation and, although Sarah said it was irrelevant, you asked the police liaison officer to find out where the two women were planning on going the next night and what decisions had been made regarding their outfits. The officer shook her head and said that there was no reason for you to know any of that.

The woman tried to blame Billy at first but the murder took place in a part of the city where, by chance, a closed-circuit television system was situated and it recorded her laughing on the phone, her head thrown back in glee at the moment she sped around the corner and lost control of her vehicle. Presented with the evidence she was advised by her own representatives to plead guilty to the charge of manslaughter and reckless driving, advice that she took and which led her towards a brief prison spell and a lengthy driving ban. None of which really mattered to you very much.

And so you have a loathing of mobile phones. Of communication. Of anyone being able to contact you. If you want to see someone, or if they need to see you, there are other ways to get in touch.

Sarah has decided to leave tomorrow; you have to stay for several more days while the authorities decide whether or not to press charges against you. They've received information regarding your state of mind and apparently this will be taken into account. You are to stand before a judge early next week but have been told that you will most likely be discharged with a warning. There may be issues about your entering Holland again but you will take these as they come. And the American girl will, no doubt, pursue you through the courts for years to come, demanding millions in compensation. You already know that you would rather put a bullet in your head than a cent in her bank account.

The crowds in Dam Square are quite large for this time of year but then today is Friday and the tourists might be getting an early start on the weekend. You and Sarah agree to go for a walk together and stroll side by side but not hand in hand.

Sarah asks whether you think you would have ended up together if she hadn't become pregnant and you tell her the truth. That ‘ended up' may be a bit previous. She turns to look at you and there is something approaching pity in her eyes.

‘If you don't want to come home, you only have to say so,' she says, and you think about it for a moment. There is a certain freedom out there that you could embrace. You can work from anywhere. You have financial security. You are in demand from travel magazines all over the world. Why are you rooting yourself to one city and one person when you no longer have to do the school run?

‘Is that what you want?' you ask her, and she shakes her head and tells you not to do that, not to turn the question around so she has to make the decision whether to stay together or separate. ‘That's not what I'm doing,' you say. ‘I just want to know. Would you prefer if I didn't come back?'

She tells you that she still loves you. She wonders whether she should leave her job and you should travel together. You don't mean this cruelly, but the truth is you can think of nothing worse. You would like to be young again and free of all these attachments. You tried them on, they worked for a while, they were stolen from you. You like the idea of going to a bar and reading a book without having to think that if you don't sleep with a girl that night it could be weeks before you'll get another opportunity. There's only one problem; that whenever you think of going away you still think of coming home to Sarah.

‘Wait here,' she says, stepping inside a souvenir shop. She collects fridge magnets with place names of cities that she has visited and you haven't seen her buy one in Amsterdam yet. You watch her through the window, which is filled with such an extraordinary array of tat that it's like a museum dedicated to bad taste. There are other tourists inside and you watch as she peruses a wall filled with magnets, running her fingers up and down as she searches for the perfect one.

A noise to your right disturbs you and you see a little boy squealing with delight as he runs ahead of his parents before tripping and falling hands first on the cobbles. There's a moment of shock on his face as he tries to understand what has happened to him, whether he is injured, whether he needs to cry or not. You reach down and give him your hand to pull him up and he stares at you, apparently fine, before running over to his father. A knock from the window and you turn to see Sarah holding a magnet out for you to see. It shows a kissing couple in the shadow of the Westerkirk and she purses her lips at you and blows a kiss, Marilyn Monroe-style, like you were a pair of kids again and she was trying to decide between you and the trainee solicitor.

You laugh at the absurdity of the moment and she mouths something you cannot hear before walking over to the cash register and placing it on the counter. You turn. You look around Dam Square. To the right, Damrak runs towards Centraal, discharging its trains like bullets into the heart of Europe. You look back at Sarah, she's rooting in her bag for change, and you turn and make your way into the crowd, hiding within their number, advancing to the opposite side of the square.

When you feel that you are far enough away that she can no longer see you, you start to run.