Authors: Simone Vlugt
‘Oh, that’s very kind, but it’s really not necessary. I’ve cooked.’
‘It smells delicious,’ Jasmine gushes. ‘Shall I just put this in the fridge then? Then he can have it tomorrow.’
I step aside and Jasmine comes in, carrying the pan like a carer from Meals on Wheels. A carer who feels remarkably at home here. She moves things around in the fridge to make space for the pan, then her gaze rests on the table. ‘That looks cosy.’
‘Yes, doesn’t it?’ I reply neutrally. ‘Raoul called to see if I could help. He has to work late.’
‘He is busy,’Jasmine says. ‘I’m amazed by how he can combine his job with looking after Valerie. That’s why I sometimes bring round food, or we eat together.’
I remember Thomas saying he’d seen someone in the house. ‘Together?’
‘Jennifer hardly eats a thing so I always cook too much,’ Jasmine explains. ‘And I don’t know about you, but I always hate cooking for just myself.’
‘But aren’t you married?’
‘My husband is a pilot so he’s not home much. Very unsociable.’
‘Aha,’ is all I say.
‘So…’ Jasmine puts her hands together and looks around smiling. ‘Everything’s under control here. I’ll get going.’
‘Would you like a drink? My dish needs at least forty-five more minutes in the oven. I was about to have a glass of wine.’
‘Oh…’ Jasmine hesitates. ‘I’m not sure…Well, why not. I’ll just get Jennifer though – she’s on her own in the house.’
‘Would you like red or white?’
‘Red,’ Jasmine says and leaves.
I get two wine glasses out, fill one with red and the other with white and put them on the coffee table. Through the bay window
I see Jasmine returning with Jennifer. Once they’ve come in, the girls go off to play and Jasmine and I sit down opposite each other a little awkwardly.
I don’t know Jasmine that well, though she was a good friend of Lydia’s. She seems quite nice. She’s also pretty, with curly red hair and warm brown eyes, but she looks pale and I notice the rings under her eyes. ‘You look pretty,’ I blurt out.
Jasmine has just picked up her glass and looks surprised. ‘Everything’s such chaos inside my head,’ she says. ‘I’m really looking forward to the summer holidays. I can hardly keep it together at school.’
‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘The atmosphere has changed so much, I really miss Lydia. Everything is different. Student numbers are dropping all the time, at least five colleagues have been told that their contracts won’t be renewed and it’s just downright unpleasant there.’
‘How terrible.’
‘It had been on the cards for a while, but after Lydia’s death the number of new students signing up plummeted. Hardly surprising. I wouldn’t want to send my child to a school where the teachers are threatened with weapons.’
‘Who exactly has been fired?’
‘I’m not sure which of us you know, but perhaps you know Luke Rombouts.’
I’m shocked. ‘Luke! Why?’
Jasmine shrugs. ‘The excuse was that they wanted someone with more teaching experience, but that doesn’t make sense. Luke is an excellent teacher. Personally I think he was fired because it got out that he was gay. He’d already been bumped out of two other schools, and he’d decided to keep quiet about it, until he had a permanent contract. He confided in Lydia. He’d have been better off not telling her because she told me, and I’m afraid she might have told other people too. In deepest confidence, of course, but if you want to be really sure a secret
won’t get out, you just have to keep your mouth shut. And Lydia wasn’t so good at that.’
I listen with mixed feelings. On one hand I’m annoyed that Jasmine is talking about my sister in this way, on the other I sense that this was exactly what happened. I remember a group of us going out to eat at Oliva one evening and Lydia mentioning Luke’s secret. I’m sure he didn’t appreciate that.
‘She didn’t do it deliberately,’ I say, feeling the need to defend my sister. ‘She was just a terrible gossip.’
‘I know that,’ Jasmine murmurs. ‘And I miss her so much. It’s so strange not seeing her at school anymore. I can’t get used to it.’
She’s got tears in her eyes and I feel my own brimming up. I wonder if I should tell her about my adventure with Bilal, but decide not to. Instead I ask, ‘The police can’t get much on Bilal Assrouti. Do you think he’s innocent?’
‘Everything seems to point towards him but I just can’t imagine that he really did it.’ Jasmine sips her wine. ‘I don’t mean that he was an angel – I had problems with Bilal too – but I’ve never felt threatened by him. It was all bravado, you know, it doesn’t mean anything.’
‘But Bilal pulled a knife,’ I remind her. ‘And it wasn’t long after that that Lydia was shot.’
Jasmine sighs. ‘I know, that’s quite a coincidence. But that doesn’t mean he shot her. He was mouthy but so are a lot of them. You know, it’s so easy to point the finger at a boy like that. A teacher at a school with a lot of Muslim students is shot. Conclusion – a Muslim student did it. But what if she’d been a teacher at St Lawrence’s College? Would the media be so quick to condemn a difficult white student?’
We sit there for a while drinking our wine.
‘Jasmine, I want to ask you something,’ I say. ‘It’s a bit of a strange subject, but did Lydia ever discuss her marriage with you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Every marriage has its problems,’ I reply. ‘I wonder if she’d have confided in you if she’d had problems with Raoul. I mean you were close friends, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So she did confide in you?’
‘She’d sometimes tell me about the arguments she had with Raoul, and I told her the things that bothered me about my husband. But what are you getting at? I presume she also talked about that kind of thing with you.’
I ignore that last comment. ‘How serious do you think their arguments were? What were they about?’
‘I’m not sure exactly,’ Jasmine reflects. ‘Just the usual, that Raoul would rather she stopped working. He can be a bit old-fashioned, don’t you think?’
‘Do you think Raoul was seeing anyone else?’
Jasmine peers into her glass for a long time before answering. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘I saw him in the Euromast restaurant just before Lydia’s death and he was with another woman. I told Lydia about it, not that she did much about it. Raoul was on a pretty long leash with her. She really loved him, you know.’
‘Yes,’ I say in a choked voice. ‘I know that.’
‘Are you all right? You look so pale.’
‘I’ve got a bit of a headache.’
‘Then I’ll get going. We’ve still got to eat.’ Jasmine stands up and calls her daughter.
I watch them crossing the street. Jasmine saw Raoul with another woman. That means that Lydia and I weren’t the only women in his life. I recall Jasmine’s expression when she came across me here unexpectedly, the house key she was holding and I wonder how much to trust her story.
‘Jasmine has just been round,’ I mention as we’re eating.
‘And I played with Jennifer,’ Valerie adds.
‘Oh?’ Raoul says with little interest.
‘She brought a pan of food with her.’
‘She does that quite often.’ Raoul’s voice doesn’t sound as grateful or tender as I’d expected, giving me a sudden and shameful vision of myself as a jealous, suspicious wife. Look at me here, at my sister’s dining table, in her house, with her husband. There’s no doubt Lydia sat here with exactly the same feelings and had exactly the same kind of conversation with Raoul. Thank god I put the candelabra away at the last minute.
My appetite has disappeared and I push my plate away.
‘Finished already?’ Raoul, who is clearly enjoying his food, looks up in surprise.
‘It’s a little rich,’ I say.
He nods, but that doesn’t stop him from taking another
serving. ‘It’s delicious,’ he says with such a sweet smile that I forget Jasmine and her pan of food in an instant. ‘You’re a good cook, just as good as Lydia.’
Go on Raoul, put Lydia back in between us again, help me remember the terrible reason I’m sitting here in her chair, remind me that she’ll always be joining us.
I don’t wait for Raoul to take a third portion. ‘I have to go, I’ve still got a tonne of things to do this evening.’
He doesn’t protest. No disappointed ‘must you go?’ or ‘stay a little bit longer’. But his eyes do follow me as I get my bag from the window seat, put on my jacket and button it up.
‘Bye-bye, Valerie darling. Do I get a kiss?’
Valerie jumps up from her chair, runs to me and gives me a cuddle. ‘Will you come again soon?’
I promise I will and give Raoul a cheerful wave.
‘I’ll see you out.’ Raoul follows me into the hall. ‘You finish your dinner,’ he says to Valerie, and closes the door behind me. Then he turns to me and looks at me with that special, half smile I’ve always found so sexy. Again I feel my belly churning.
He looks me in the eyes and whispers, ‘Thank you.’
Nothing more. We’re so close in the enclosed hall. For a second I think he’s going to kiss me, but he turns around and goes back to Valerie without saying another word.
Am I disappointed? Would I really have let him kiss me, here in Lydia’s house? What am I expecting from Raoul? I don’t even know what I expect from myself.
As I cycle home, my thoughts take another direction. I think back to my conversation with Jasmine and what she said about Luke and Lydia.
I should have a chat with Luke. But how should I approach this? I barely know him. I can’t ask him right out if he thinks Lydia was responsible for him losing his job, and how angry he was about it.
He was still working at the school when she was killed, so it
can’t have been him. But did he sense he was about to be sacked? Did he already know about it? Did Lydia just give him that last push towards the dole?
I decide not to approach Luke, but to run this information by Noorda. After my adventures with Bilal, I don’t feel like playing detective anymore.
At home, there’s a message on my answering machine. It’s someone from a women’s magazine I regularly take portrait photos for. I haven’t had many commissions from them recently – if you turn anyone down a couple of times in a row, they look for someone else to use. But it seems the magazine hasn’t forgotten me because another photographer is ill and now they want me to photograph a well-known writer. Can I call back on the editor’s mobile?
I stare at my answering machine undecided. I haven’t done anything for ages. But the thought of work gives me a buzz somewhere deep down. For the first time.
Photography has always been my great love and the realisation that I feel the same way about it despite everything else changing in my life sends a wave of relief through me.
I’ll go back to work. I’ll accept that job and take some good photos of the writer. I’ll open my studio again and force my way back into the world of photography. Maybe I’ll even travel, do a reportage piece. Edinburgh Festival is coming up. Last year I went to a festival in Lucerne and took pictures which I sold afterwards to a travel magazine.
I pick up the phone.
The writer is an attractive but serious man of around forty-five who sits up very straight and has rather pointedly stacked up some copies of his new novel on a table. He is being interviewed in his home in Utrecht and I’ve taken the train there to do the photos afterwards.
It’s a wonderful feeling, holding my camera again, setting up
my equipment and working out the best composition. Photography is fantastic. The man facing me constructs a world with words, but I write with light. A good photo can say so much, and it’s often all about the details.
I’ve got the newest digital camera on the market, with a super-fast shutter speed. I took some wonderful shots of fireworks with it, with long trails of light. Those photos are hanging in my studio now, in the exhibition space.
As the writer straightens his pile of books and pulls down his jacket, I put up a circular silver screen to reflect the light. I move the pile of books into the frame to create depth in the photo and focus on his eyes.
‘I’m just going to click away,’ I announce. ‘Try to look as relaxed as possible.’
For most people that’s a difficult request. As soon as a camera is pointed at them they stiffen and all spontaneity is lost. I chat away casually to relax the atmosphere, to reanimate his face. When did your book come out? How many is that now? You’ve written a lot, haven’t you? I don’t know where writers get so many ideas from. What’s your source of inspiration? Meanwhile I capture an unexpected smile with my camera.
Not that an unnatural pose is the only problem I have to deal with when I’m taking pictures. I’ve been working for fifteen minutes before I spot that the writer’s fly is open. How could I have missed that? Of course I can use a close-up, but the magazine asked for a full-length shot.
For form’s sake, I snap away as I try to work out the best way to solve this. I’ve got the impression that this man has quite a well-developed ego and that a direct approach won’t increase the chances of a successful shoot.
‘I think we’ve got a few good shots there. Lovely, but…’
‘But what?’ the writer asks.
‘Maybe it would be nice if you put that pile of books on your lap and read one.’
Getting the book in the picture is always attractive for writers and the man immediately collects the books. I click away. Lovely, at least I’ve got that, despite it being an extremely traditional photograph. Not something I’d want to hand in, but there’s no alternative.
I carry on for so long that the author takes a toilet break. When he returns his zips are closed and I take a few more shots of him. Shortly after that I’m leaving with a series of wonderful pictures: nonchalant, stylish and, most importantly, with all the author’s zips done up. In the train back to Rotterdam, I realise that during that hour I felt fully myself again.
Sometimes a fear of forgetting Lydia takes hold of me. Not really forgetting, of course, but it’s as if the real Lydia keeps stepping backwards, leaving only a weak reflection behind. She’s been dead for two months now and I don’t want to say I’ve forgotten what her face looks like, or that the sound of her voice has faded in my memory, but the image of her has become blurred in my mind.