At Marjan's House

Six small apples still hung in the tree in Marjan's front garden. Hester always noticed them when she rang, because her mother never opened immediately, even if already in the hall. Something had to be put down first, one last task finished. Only then could the door open and the visitor come in without feeling anyone had been waiting for them.

'Right on time,' Marjan said.

Hester smelt gravy and fried onion. A cardboard box of books for the second-hand shop stood in the hall. Her mother tapped it with her foot.

'Could you take those on Sunday? You've got the car.'

'If they fit in the boot.'

'It's only one box.'

'I've got a lot of equipment coming back on Sunday. I'll see what I can do.'

Marjan took her coat. 'Leave your bag in the sitting room. Your sister's here.'

Merel sat at the dining table leafing through a trade magazine. Her cycle helmet lay beside her plate. She returned Hester's greeting with a nod, not hostile but no offer to forget the morning either. The good plates were out, with the thin green rim. Their mother used them when pretending there was no particular occasion.

'Bram couldn't come?' Hester asked.

'Work.' Merel closed the magazine. 'And he wasn't invited.'

'He knows he's always welcome,' Marjan called from the kitchen.

'That's different,' Merel said, not loudly enough to start a conversation.

Hester sat opposite. On the wall hung a framed photograph of De Werf's opening in 2003. Marjan in the middle with scissors in her hand, Brecht half hidden behind a man wearing a civic chain. Hester had seen it so often that the order of the people had come to seem inevitable. Now she studied Brecht's blouse and the folder held against her leg. There must have been a reason she had not put it down.

Marjan brought in a dish of potatoes. Sixty-nine, and still lifting heavy dishes as though asking for help risked mistakes. Hester stood to fetch the second one. She could take that, her mother said, but with the thick trivet. The table had just been waxed.

A new pair of reading glasses lay on the sideboard, the price tag still on its case. Marjan asked Hester to snip it off. Not those scissors, she said as Hester went to the cutlery drawer; the small ones were underneath. Her precise order was easy to live with, provided you never disturbed it.

Hester cut the thread and immediately had the glasses pressed into her hand to inspect the frames. Her mother had bought them on offer. Two pairs for what she used to pay for one. The second was for the car.

'I'm not spending my life looking for them,' Marjan said.

A reasonable solution to an ordinary problem. Hester wondered if she could ever see her mother without their old assumptions, without reading something into every container and every instruction. She returned the glasses to the case and sat down. She did not need to prove everything in the room wrong to ask about the railing later.

For the first ten minutes they discussed a neighbour wanting to move and a nephew who had left his job to train as a gardener. Marjan had helped the neighbour with forms and directed the nephew to a fund. She remembered the sums, the deadlines and who had yet to thank her. It was no performance. People had received real help. At nineteen Hester too had been presented with a form, everything filled in except her signature.

'There's something I could do for your programme too,' Marjan told Merel. 'I spoke to the treasurer. There's money left for activities tackling loneliness. Not much, but if I send on your proposal—'

'I've applied already.'

'To which department?'

'The right one. I've had confirmation.'

'You could have said. Now I've wasted—'

'You didn't have to do anything for me.'

Hester cut a potato in half. Her knife tapped the plate. Once, this would have been her moment to say their mother meant well. It usually got the practical conversation going again. Today she left Merel's answer alone.

Marjan filled her plate and asked after Finn. Hester showed the distribution cabinet photograph. Her mother enlarged it at once, as Finn had asked, and admired the straight rows. She said he got his aptitude from his grandfather. Perhaps she was right. Hester did not want to deny her that pleasure merely because she was starting to see something else in her too.

'Tell him to come this weekend,' Marjan said. 'I haven't spoken to him in weeks.'

'He's got plans. You can ring him.'

'He doesn't always answer.'

'He's at his placement in the daytime.'

Marjan pushed back the phone. 'It was only a thought.'

They ate. Merel asked for the salad and Hester passed it without comment. A neighbour's child glided past the window on a scooter. The room was warm. It could all have been an ordinary Tuesday if Marjan had not asked whether Fleur had reassured her about the business with the invitations.

'Reassured me about what?' Hester asked.

'That Sunday won't turn into an embarrassing spectacle. She rang me.'

'What did she say?'

'That you're all talking a great deal about the past. And Jasper's impatient. We knew that already.'

'Did she tell you what Jasper said?'

'He's worried about the building. His money's in it.'

'He threatened Ruben with his employer.'

Marjan put down her cutlery. 'Did he actually say that?'

Hester repeated the words about reliability. Her mother raised her eyebrows.

'That's unkind, but you're making a very serious business of it.'

'I've reported it.'

Merel looked up. Marjan kept her eyes on her plate.

'Where?'

'To the police. I was already there this morning.'

'With that girl.'

'With Robin. She has a name.'

'I know it perfectly well. I also remember who helped her into her high chair while her mother worked.'

Merel pushed her plate away a few centimetres. Hester saw but did not turn towards her. She had asked her mother something; she needed to stay with it.

'Why did you mention that loose railing yesterday?'

Marjan looked surprised. 'Because that's why it went so badly wrong.'

'Jasper hadn't mentioned it here. Not to me.'

'So I wasn't supposed to know? Hester, I ran that workshop. I spoke to the insurer. I helped arrange a funeral. It was in the papers.'

She said it easily. The answer fitted. Hester did not know exactly what the papers had said; she had not looked for the reports in years. The word could have come from public knowledge as readily as private. She had hoped for an odd hesitation and got an entirely reasonable mother looking back at her.

'I noticed it,' she said.

'I understand. You're apparently noticing a great deal now.' Marjan looked at Merel. 'It affected you badly at the time too.'

'Me too?'

'You know perfectly well what I mean.'

'Then don't make it sound as though I was sitting watching everybody else.'

Marjan sighed, not dramatically, just as though the evening were proving harder than necessary. She took the ladle and asked who wanted more gravy. Hester shook her head. Merel said nothing.

'I did what I could,' Marjan said. 'You were both so young. Someone had to make the calls, see that people ate, speak to the parents. It doesn't sound impressive now, but without those things a group falls apart.'

'We did fall apart,' Hester said.

'Yes. Perhaps that couldn't be helped.'

The defence was not absurd. Hester remembered the soup the day after Brecht died, the address list, people gathering round her mother because at least she knew what happened next. Hester had wanted somebody to know too. She could not invent a different youth in this room just because she now saw what the reassurance had cost.

'But it doesn't make everything right,' she said.

'I didn't say it did.'

Merel stood and began collecting plates. Marjan said she need not. Merel replied that she was taking her own to the kitchen, nothing else. Hester remained seated. She wanted to follow, but her sister needed no escort to put away a plate.

'This Robin,' Marjan said more quietly. 'You can't blame a child like that for having questions. But be careful she doesn't make you promise a story that isn't there.'

'She's twenty-four.'

'I know her age.'

'And she didn't ask for promises.'

'People rarely ask for exactly what they're hoping for. You have enough experience to know that.'

A good sentence, Hester thought. Her mother could win over a whole table with it. What someone hoped became impossible to check; whatever Marjan said about it could then pass for insight.

Merel returned with her helmet under her arm. 'I'm going.'

'There's yoghurt,' Marjan said.

'I'll have something at home.'

'Don't be silly. You can stay another ten minutes.'

'I want to go home.'

Her mother looked at Hester. Not asking; expecting her eldest to get the conversation back on track. Hester took the glass jug and topped up her own water.

'Then she'll go,' she said.

Marjan drew her head back slightly. 'So I hear.'

Merel said goodbye without a kiss. A coat zip sounded in the hall. Hester followed at a distance and, by the front door, asked only whether she had her bike light.

'I have,' Merel said. 'I'm not sixteen.'

'No.'

For a second they stood facing one another. Merel's look softened a little.

'I need to speak to Ruben tonight,' Hester said. 'About my statement.'

'I thought so.'

'I'll let you know I've done it.'

'That's all I need.'

She opened the door herself and went into the garden. Hester saw the cycle lamp come on, a firm white beam across the paving. She shut the door after Merel turned the corner.

In the sitting room Marjan had stacked the empty dishes. 'It does wear me out sometimes,' she said. 'You can't say anything these days.'

Hester picked up the dishes. 'You can say all sorts of things. And she can leave.'

'Was that really necessary?'

'Apparently.'

She took the things to the kitchen and asked where the storage tubs were. Marjan pointed to a cupboard. They worked side by side for ten minutes without resuming the conversation. She was not being banished. Her mother had her find a lid, pointed out the wrong size, pushed the yoghurt back into the fridge. Those predictable tasks made it possible to stay a little longer.

At the door Marjan offered food for tomorrow. Hester accepted, because refusing for its own sake would be another negotiation. She left the box of books; she had promised nothing about space in the boot.

'Ring me if there's anything,' Marjan said.

'I will when there's something to discuss.'

'You're so formal.'

Hester had no answer that would not start another conversation. She put on her coat, thanked her for dinner and left the garden. More than an hour until nine. In the studio she put the food in the fridge and took her written correction from her bag. She read it again. It needed no words about her mother.