The First Correction

Ruben sat by the window of the place on the station square. Two glasses remained on the table, one empty, the other holding a finger of beer. His colleague had left. Hester first saw him through the window and paused on the pavement to adjust her grip on her bag. Then she went in.

'Want anything?' he asked.

'Water's fine.'

'That doesn't count as an order here.'

'Tea, then.'

He caught the woman's eye behind the bar and ordered tea. Hester sat opposite. He still wore his coat, his folder beside him on the bench. Two of the three daily specials on the board behind the bar had been crossed out. She had chosen this place because it held no memories for her. Now she had to avoid turning even that absence into conversation.

'Your train?' she asked.

'Seven past ten. There's another if I miss it. Say what you wanted to say.'

She put her bag on the empty chair beside her. The notebook stayed inside.

'In 2004 I said Merel was with me in the kitchen when Brecht fell. It wasn't true. She only came in after I'd heard the crash. I hadn't seen her before.'

Ruben looked at the half-empty glass. His hand rested beside the beer mat, not round it.

'Why did you say that?'

'She was crying. I thought she might have done something she couldn't explain. I decided I had to shield her.'

'You thought she'd done something.'

'Yes.'

'And you let everybody look at me.'

Hester nodded. She could not trace all the suspicion directly to her one sentence, but she would not start apportioning it now. He had not known where her quick certainty came from. He had faced a whole group who could hide behind one another.

'I didn't defend you. I asked you nothing. I let you think I just didn't want to be with you any more.'

'You didn't.'

'No. I was afraid you'd notice something was wrong.'

He looked up. She had expected the first factual sentence to be hardest and underestimated what followed. His face did not turn furious. He looked at her as he might have looked at a stranger asking him to sign off an old claim for damages.

The tea arrived. The woman asked if he wanted another beer. Ruben shook his head and waited until she was behind the bar again.

'So all that time. When I rang and your mother said to leave you alone. You knew you'd made something up.'

'Yes.'

'And later? When you had a child, when we saw each other at that supermarket? Did you reach any age and think: now I can say it?'

Hester removed the teabag from the glass and put it on the saucer. It had not brewed long enough. She did not put it back; that would become something pointless to keep her busy.

'I kept thinking it wouldn't change anything. That I'd only put Merel in danger again. Leaving it seemed more and more reasonable.'

'Reasonable for you.'

'Yes.'

Ruben pushed away his beer. 'I'm finding it incredibly hard not to ask what was going on with your sister. You sit there saying you suspected her. Apparently I'm supposed to stay very calm and respect the limits of what you know.'

'You don't have to say that.'

'I know. But you've put her in my head.'

Exactly what Merel had meant. Hester had lived with an assumption for twenty-two years. She could pass it on, but that did not turn it into anything more. She could not counter that by presenting a better version of herself.

'I saw nothing that makes her responsible,' she said. 'Only that she was upset. Drawing a conclusion from that was wrong too. I'm telling you so you know why I lied, not so you'll reach the same conclusion.'

'You can't choose what somebody hears.'

'No.'

A bus arrived outside. A boy with a guitar on his back ran for the door and made it just in time. Ruben watched briefly. Then he asked whether she had corrected her statement or was merely consulting a few people first.

'I went to the police this morning. With Robin. Had it recorded.'

'Why with her?'

'She wanted to explain why she has questions. We didn't answer for each other.'

'And now you want me to do the same about the path.'

'That's your decision. I think they should have your account. But I don't want it to sound as though finally doing my part gives me the right to tell you what to do.'

He looked at her and lifted his folder off the bench. It held more than the delivery list. Hester saw a train ticket, work papers, a small birthday card. A life that had not been laid out for this week.

'I'll contact them,' he said. 'Not because you think I should.'

'Good.'

'And I'll help with the delivery on Wednesday. If Jasper starts again, I leave. That's not a threat to Fleur. I just won't stay to prove I'm innocent enough for your afternoon.'

'I'll record that as a working arrangement.'

'You don't have to record everything.'

Hester did not laugh. He was right, though some practical part genuinely needed passing on. She asked whether he wanted his name mentioned when she told the others on Wednesday what she had corrected. He said she did not need his name to explain her own words.

'You didn't lie because I existed. You lied to protect your sister. Say that. And let me decide what I say.'

She nodded. A telephone rang at the bar. The woman answered with her first name and said the kitchen was closed. The ordinary world kept providing brief interruptions in which Hester could recover without needing Ruben to do it for her.

'I don't expect you to forgive me,' she said.

He straightened his coat. 'I find that sentence difficult. Now I'm supposed to say it's good that you understand.'

'You don't have to.'

'There it is again.'

Hester looked at her tea. He had done nothing cruel by agreeing to hear her out. She was only discovering how little there was to say once she stopped secretly trying to secure a favourable response.

'Thank you for coming,' she said.

'That one's all right.'

He stood and went to pay. Hester asked what she owed. He gave the price of the tea and she transferred it back immediately on her phone. No treat, no elaborate gesture from either of them.

Outside they walked the same way as far as the station corner. Ruben held his phone to the ticket reader and looked back.

'I'm not deciding anything about us tonight,' he said.

'There doesn't have to be an us.'

'That's what I mean. You're ahead of me again. I'm just telling you what I'm not doing now.'

Hester put her hands in her pockets. She waited until he had really finished.

'Goodnight,' he said.

'Goodnight.'

She walked back without watching him go. Outside the closed cycle shop she took out her phone and told Merel she had spoken to Ruben. Then she deleted the sentence saying it had gone as well as possible. Her sister did not need an assessment of how Hester had survived her own confession.

Merel rang almost at once. Hester sat on the low wall beside the shop.

'What did you say?'

'The same precise correction. That you came in after the crash. That I'd seen nothing. I also told him why I lied. That I was afraid you'd done something.'

Merel did not answer straight away. Hester heard a tap and Bram in the background asking whether he could turn out the light. Merel said she was coming.

'So he thinks it now too.'

'I don't know. He said I couldn't choose what he heard. I told him my fear wasn't a fact.'

'It wasn't.'

'No.'

A man on an electric bike braked at the crossing. The delivery bag on his back was bigger than his torso. Hester watched until the light turned green. Her sister's brief silence did not require another argument.

'I'm angry with you,' Merel said.

'I know.'

'I'm not saying it as a warning. Just because I am.'

'All right.'

'And I'm glad I no longer have to pretend you know exactly where I was.'

Hester rested her free hand on the cold stone beside her. 'I never knew.'

'I know. We just behaved as though you did. As though I had to back up your story, even to you.'

She had arranged it so herself. If Merel was frightened, it proved she needed protection. If she got on with her life, it proved the protection had worked. Hester had left no room for contradiction.

'Would you like to talk tomorrow?' she asked.

'Not first thing. I've got shopping, then the kitchen. I might ask you round on Thursday. I'll see how things go.'

'Fine.'

'And don't ask Mum how I am in the meantime.'

'I won't.'

Merel breathed out audibly. 'I'll be cycling to work tomorrow as usual. You don't need to pick me up anywhere.'

'I wasn't planning to.'

'Not now, perhaps.'

Something of their old humour, without resolving the rest. Hester was glad she did not instantly answer with a joke to win their relationship back. She simply said she was available, without making availability an appointment.

Merel asked whether Fleur had arranged another group meeting. Hester said they still needed one on Wednesday evening, mainly because the exhibition texts were unfinished. If she raised her correction there, she would tell her sister beforehand. Not to make her part of a version, but to stop her being unexpectedly confronted again.

'I'll decide for myself whether to come,' Merel said.

'Yes.'

'Good. At least I know.'

A small, workable agreement. Hester noted it only after the call, among the working hours and the appointment with Tessa. Her sister did not need to sign it.

On the way back to Nieuwstraat a message arrived from Robin. Her gran would see Hester at home the following morning. Half past eight. Robin sent the address and said Else would show her the letter. Else had also made it clear she was angry about the invitations. Hester did not need to mediate.

Hester replied that she would come. She asked whether Else wanted her to bring anything, then deleted the question before sending. No polite purchase could give the visit a different reason. Just a pen for herself, if Else allowed her to take notes.

In the studio she took off her shoes by the door. Her mother's food was in the fridge, bread on the worktop, an invoice waiting on her laptop, for work still unpaid. She sent that first. Then she cleared the table, laid out her notebook and checked the walking time to Else's street.

Eleven minutes. She set her alarm so she would not need to hurry. Brecht's envelope went back in her bag with the other papers. She had not thrown it away and would show it tomorrow only if Else asked. For now she did not need to put anything on an empty chair. She needed to ring a doorbell at half past eight.