Shadow Sister (21 page)

Nanda nods but doesn’t dare ask for the key back. I’d hoped she wouldn’t, but if that failed I still had the key from the kitchen drawer.

I follow Nanda into the hall and say goodbye. As I descend the stairs, I hear her go upstairs and, a few seconds later, she locks her front door. For form’s sake, I open the outside door and let it slam shut again. Then I go back upstairs and open Sylvie’s door.

Now, let’s get to work. Sylvie’s not coming home any time soon so I’ve got time. Nevertheless, I hurry, driven by an unsettling feeling.

I begin with the dresser in the sitting room and make a fleet-fingered search of its cubby holes. Bank statements, insurance paperwork, the telephone book, Yellow Pages, a pile of old magazines. Nothing special. The drawers don’t contain anything interesting either.

I go to the wall cabinet in the corner, but there’s nothing in it except crockery. I tiptoe into the bedroom, as if someone might hear me, and open Sylvie’s wardrobe. I’m acting strangely, I realise. At least, if Sylvie doesn’t have anything to hide. How would I explain this if she suddenly arrived home?

My hand gropes into the space behind her tidy piles of clothes, but discovers nothing. I carry on searching – my eye falls upon a row of photo albums on the lowest shelf. I sit down on the edge of the bed and leaf through them. Baby photos, school photos, Sylvie on her father’s lap, pictures of Santa Claus, Christmas and birthdays. And then just photos of Sylvie and her mother, probably taken with the self-timer.

They go up to when Sylvie was around thirteen, after that there are a few empty pages, and you can see from the damaged cardboard that a few photographs have been torn out.

I set the albums back, get up and look around the bedroom. If I wanted to hide something in here, where would I put it?

I pull open the drawers of the dressing table. Nothing. I look around and in a final attempt I lift up the mattress.

Bingo.

There’s no gun here, but there is a scrapbook on top of the bed slats.

I hold the mattress with one hand and reach for the book with the other. I drop the mattress, sit down on the bed, and open the book.

Raoul and Sylvie look back at me, their cheeks pressed
together, big smiles on their faces. On the next page they sit together on a sunny terrace with their arms around each other, there are lots of close ups of Raoul’s face, taken by an infatuated Sylvie.

I leaf through the book with cold, stiff fingers. It’s full of tickets and hotel and restaurant receipts. And love letters. Lots of love letters. The receipts date to a year ago and stop abruptly, but they tell a clear story. A story of a scale that doesn’t quite sink in.

Each new page is like a stab in the heart, but I can’t stop myself from looking. I read each love letter that Sylvie has carefully hoarded and stuck in, and I let pain take control of me. At last I drop the book on the bed, too shocked to cry.

I sit very still as my brain processes what my eyes have seen. A sudden wave of nausea sends me to the bathroom, my hand over my mouth. I lean over the toilet bowl, but nothing happens and the feeling recedes. I get up, take a sip of water from the tap and peer at my pale face in the mirror. So it was Sylvie. Her motive is as clear as day.

And what’s going on with Thomas then? Is she really seeing him? Perhaps she’s using him as a decoy.

On an impulse, I get my mobile out of my pocket and call Thomas. To my despair, I get his voicemail and, after wondering what to do, I leave a message.

‘Thomas, it’s Elisa. There’s something I want to ask you – are you seeing Sylvie? Has anything ever happened between you? You’ll probably wonder why I want to know, but I’ll explain.’ I pause, intending to hang up, then add: ‘I’m at Sylvie’s house and I’ve found photos of her with Raoul. And I found out something else, you’ll never believe it. You know Noorda asked if I
knew someone called Hubert Ykema? He was the owner of the gun used to kill Lydia. Well, he’s Sylvie’s stepfather.’

I hang up and look around. There’s only a small chance the gun is here. She probably got rid of it. Perhaps I should go, I need to talk to Noorda.

I hear the door downstairs opening. Fast footsteps coming up the stairs. Shit, that can’t be Sylvie! No, it’s not, it’s only quarter past six. It must be someone who lives above her. But that’s Nanda, and she’s home.

A key is pushed into the lock and I freeze. My eyes search for a hiding place, but there’s no time. Sylvie comes in carrying a plastic bag that stinks of cooking fat. When she sees me she stops.

‘Elisa, what are you doing here?’

I look at her with a forced smile and decide to tell the same story I told Nanda. ‘I’ve lost my house keys and thought I might have given you a spare set at some point.’

‘Not that I remember.’

We stand there just staring at each other. My heart races and I feel the heat in my face. Sylvie studies me.

‘How did you get in?’

‘Nanda still had a key,’ I explain. ‘From the previous occupants.’

‘Wonderful!’ Sylvie walks past me into the kitchen and I realise that the scrapbook is still on her bed. The hope that she won’t see it disappears as quickly as it arises. As she goes past, Sylvie glances into her bedroom, at the bed, where the book is spread open on her duvet. She turns towards me.

‘Did you think your key was under my mattress?’

I don’t say anything. Neither of us do.

‘So, now you know,’ Sylvie says. ‘Raoul and I are seeing each other. Given the circumstances we’ve laid it to rest for a while, but in a few month’s time we’ll be going public. Would you like a drink? I’m having a glass of wine, you too?’ I follow her into
the kitchen and wait in the doorway. Sylvie puts the plastic bag down on the work surface and removes two small Turkish wraps from it.

‘Want one?’

I shake my head.

‘The dinner was cancelled,’ Sylvie says. ‘My colleague felt ill, so I just took her home.’

I can’t stop staring at her. I’d rather fly at her throat, slap her around the face or sink my nails into her perfect skin, but I’m paralysed by shock. Sylvie is seeing Raoul. They’re waiting a while before telling everyone. And what about me? And Lydia?

Sylvie lays the table. She puts out two place mats, two glasses of wine and fetches the plates with the wraps from the kitchen.

‘Sit down.’ It sounds like an order.

I sit down, but only because I want some answers from her. The door isn’t locked and I’m near enough to it. I can escape if necessary.

‘Go on, take your coat off. It’s not that cold, is it?’ Sylvie sits down and I join her at the table.

‘So Nanda still had a key? Strange that she never gave it back.’ Sylvie cuts a strip from her Turkish wrap and puts it into her mouth.

‘It was left over from the previous occupants,’ I repeat. ‘She said she’d forgotten about it.’

‘Where’s the key now?’

I fish it from my trouser pocket and put it on the table. ‘I kept it for you.’

‘How nice of you,’ Sylvie says as she takes the key. ‘And then you thought you’d just take a look under the mattress?’

I say nothing.

Sylvie looks at me over the rim of her wineglass. ‘Or did you just happen to lift up the mattress and there was my scrapbook?’

It’s time for me to get down from the dock and begin my own
line of questioning. I lean back, trying to seem relaxed as possible and look at Sylvie. ‘How long have you been seeing Raoul?’

On the surface it’s a cosy picture, two girlfriends sitting down to a bottle of wine and a take-away, but the tension between us is like a magnetic field.

‘About a year and a half. Although we’ve hardly seen each other the past six months.’

‘Why not?’

Sylvie pauses for a while. ‘Raoul thought it would be better,’ she says, and I hear a tinge of bitterness in her voice. ‘I thought we’d done a good job of keeping our affair secret. How did you find out?’

‘I suspected it.’

‘And so you decided to come and have a rummage around my house. You could have just asked me, Elisa.’

‘Would you have admitted it? After you’d kept quiet about it for so long?’

Sylvie takes a mouthful of food and nods. ‘Yes, I would have admitted it. What’s the point of denying it when it’s clear enough. I love him. I don’t have to be ashamed of my feelings.’

‘Don’t you? He was married, and the father of a small child,’ I snap.

Sylvie doesn’t seem bothered by this comment. ‘You know, what we’ve got together is so deep and so real that I’ve never doubted that we’d end up together.’ She talks with her mouth full. ‘I knew we’d end up together.’

‘Really? Were you so sure?’ I lean towards her. ‘I’m going to ask you a single question, Sylvie, and I expect an honest answer.’

Sylvie takes a sip of wine.

I force myself to look her in the eye. My friend, my rival. Raoul’s mistress. ‘Sylvie,’ I say, my voice shaking, ‘did you kill Lydia?’

The preparations for the barbecue have us all busy. My mother and I go into the kitchen to make the salads; my father and Raoul mess around with briquettes on the barbecue next to the terrace, and Elisa lays the table, assisted by Valerie.

‘Nice isn’t it, all of us together?’ My mother is washing the lettuce and shakes the colander to get rid of the water. ‘We should do this more often.’

‘Yes, it is lovely,’ I admit, and I mean it. I love going home. I have a very strong bond with my parents and I miss them when I haven’t spoken to them for a while. I chat to my mother on the phone a couple of times a week, or she’ll come to Rotterdam on her free day and we’ll go shopping together. We have lunch somewhere or drink coffee in one of the cafes, discussing all kinds of things. That’s why I’m finding it hard not to talk about my current problems.

Each time I take a deep breath, ready to pour my heart out, my mouth fills with so much air that the words seem blocked in.
I’m sure my parents would be worried if they knew what had happened at school; more so, if they knew that Bilal wasn’t stopping at that. Of course I can keep silent about it, but I know myself. Once I begin to tell something, the whole story comes rushing out and I can no longer stop.

‘You’re quiet today.’ My mother looks at me. ‘Is there something wrong, Lydia?’

I respond with a simple shake of my head. ‘Bit tired.’

‘Hmm.’ She looks like she doesn’t believe it. ‘Everything all right with you and Raoul?’

I look at my husband out of the kitchen window, he’s in the process of helping my sister move the table so it’s not in the full sun. The table has already been laid which is why they are walking very carefully and when a row of plates begin to slide, their giggled warnings resound through the garden.

‘They get on well, don’t they?’ my mother comments. ‘It could have been very different, you hear those stories sometimes…Did you know that Tinny’s daughter Annelise never comes home anymore because she’s fallen out with Christie’s husband? It’s pretty serious. Tinny asked me if we have the same problem, because she knows how close you two are. But I said, ‘Not at all, it’s going well with us. Elisa and Raoul got on really well right from the start.’

‘It wasn’t always like that. There was a time when we used to slag off each other’s boyfriends,’ I say.

‘That was because you were so attached to each other,’ my mother says. ‘That whole separation process needed to happen and boyfriends are a big threat.’

I cut up the tomatoes, slipping a slice into my mouth as I look out of the window again. Raoul and Lydia are drinking beer, Raoul’s third and Elisa’s second. They’re standing a bit to one side, near the trees, and they seem caught up in an involved discussion, so involved they haven’t noticed that my father is dilly-dallying with the briquettes, he can’t get them to light, and
that Valerie is dangerously close to the edge of the swimming pool.

I put down the knife, wipe my hands on a tea towel and step outside.

‘Raoul,’ I shout, hearing the sharpness in my voice. ‘Keep an eye on Valerie, will you? And my father might need some help.’ I go back into the kitchen without waiting for a reaction. My mother gives me a look and gets the baguettes out of their packaging. For a while the only sound is the ticking of the clock, and the crack of the bread falling apart under my mother’s knife. Finally my mother puts the slices into a round dish and says, ‘Just tell me what the matter is.’

And I burst into tears.

Of course we talk about nothing else after that. My father comes into the kitchen, not suspecting a thing, sees that I’m crying and panics right away. I must sit down, not say anything for a while, drink water. My mother attempts to console me, my father dismisses her words impatiently, then they have a discussion about what should or shouldn’t be said in this kind of situation, all the while advising me to ‘stay calm’.

I take a deep breath and explain what happened at school in as few words as possible. To be honest my parents aren’t as shocked as I’d expected, which annoys me a little.

‘I’ve always been afraid something like that would happen,’ my mother says. ‘You hear so much about violence in schools these days…But I didn’t realise it was that bad at your school.’

‘It’s hardly like I’m threatened with a knife every lesson,’ I say, feeling an inexplicable need to put things into perspective. ‘I still enjoy working there, but I’m shocked by what happened.’

‘Was it a single incident? Or have other things happened?’ My father studies me intensely.

I hesitate, just for a second, but they both notice.

‘There were other things,’ my mother notes, crossing her
arms; she’s clearly not going to give up until she’s heard all the details.

‘Oh, it doesn’t mean much. Bilal keeps hanging around near the school and giving me threatening looks. He doesn’t do anything else, but it’s upsetting me. It’s pure intimidation.’

‘You can say that again,’ my father rages. ‘And it’s also a punishable offence. It’s a form of stalking. Have you been to the police?’

‘I reported it, but didn’t try to press charges. They don’t do much about people pulling out knives, let alone hanging around schools,’ I say.