What Brecht Wanted

Else had spread a towel over the table to protect the wood from the sharp edge of her drawing box. Beside it, Hester noticed a thin tablecloth folded into a square. Something had been moved before they arrived. That small sign of preparation unsettled her more than Monday's invitation had.

'You can put your coat there,' Else said. 'We don't use that chair anyway.'

Robin pulled the chair towards her and sat down, still wearing her coat. Her tool case stood under the table. She had to be in Dordrecht at twelve to dismantle an exhibition, she had told Hester on the way. Her client was paying for three installers, not two and a woman counting screws between phone calls.

Else slid a sheet of paper into the middle of the table. 'This is the letter. Not something I only found yesterday. It was with her cards. I sometimes read it on her birthday, if I can bear to.'

Hester kept her hands on her knees. The paper had two folds, a small tear at the top and Else's former address. A stamp had been removed from the envelope. Otherwise it looked like a letter someone had written because calling seemed too expensive, or because there would be questions at the other end of the line.

'May I read it?'

'That's why you're here.'

Brecht had asked her mother to look after Robin the following Saturday. She wanted to visit an open studio in Utrecht where someone was renting out workspaces. She described a painted-cardboard set that kept falling over in the draught, and a production for which there was still no money. Then came six lines about De Werf. She was leaving. She wanted to take her designs with her. Marjan had once again had her own name put beneath the work in an announcement. This time Brecht would contact whoever was writing the text herself.

Hester read the passage twice, more slowly the second time. It was not a farewell. Brecht asked her mother to keep the blue cup Robin liked using. Below her signature, she added that for once she would also like someone else to peel the potatoes.

'I've still got that cup,' Else said. 'Ugly thing. A duck on it that looks like a chicken.'

Robin took off her coat. 'It's at mine.'

'Then you've still got it.'

Hester looked at the last sentence. In her memories, Brecht was often hurrying towards her with a pot of brushes tucked under her arm, angry because someone had let the paint dry out. Or she saw the people standing round Brecht at the foot of the stairs again. Two fixed pictures, with almost nothing between them for twenty-two years. The young woman who wanted something other than De Werf, who asked for a babysitter and simply did not want to peel potatoes, fitted neither picture.

'I didn't know she was looking for a place of her own,' she said.

'Hardly anyone did. She had to find out whether she could afford it first. A place like that is another bill, after all.'

Else lifted the lid of the box. Inside were photographs, leaflets, an exercise book containing a shopping list for a party. She chose nothing remarkable. A photograph of Brecht in swimming shorts and a far too roomy shirt, with Robin on her hip. Another of her mending a puncture. Else kept hold of that one.

'She was having a good moan about it here. I'd bought her that bicycle. Second-hand. She thought I'd been ripped off. But she used it for another three years.'

Robin gave a brief laugh. 'Sounds familiar.'

'At least you haven't got a mother to moan back at you any more.'

Else put the photograph down before either of them could answer. Hester was glad Robin did not pretend the remark had not affected her. She ran her thumb over the hinge of her tool case, then said she had bought a second-hand drill the week before that only worked on one setting. Else asked how much she had paid. For a few minutes they talked about things that could still be repaired.

Only when Robin drew the envelope towards her again did Hester ask whether Ellen had seen the letter yet. On Tuesday she had said an original existed, not that she had it herself.

'I rang yesterday,' Else said. 'They're collecting it this afternoon. Or I'll take it in, if they can't collect. I want a receipt for what I hand over.'

'You'll get one,' Robin said. 'They were going to ring back about that.'

'Then I'll wait. And you're only taking the copy.'

A transparent folder lay beneath the box. At the top of the printout, in plain block capitals, was the word COPY. Hester was grateful someone else was making the distinction. Her work consisted of versions: provisional lists, final lists, lists revised yet again. She did not have to decide which details might matter later. It was enough that Else knew what she was giving, and to whom.

'I'd like a copy for the exhibition captions too,' Hester said. 'Just to check the names. I'm not putting the letter on display.'

'You decide that with Robin. Not just with me.'

Robin took a second printout from the folder. 'You can use this to check what we say about her leaving. Not to print all those lines word for word. The cup doesn't need to go on a wall.'

Hester nodded. 'I won't parade it as evidence.'

Else looked at her. 'You used to turn all sorts of things into evidence. That she was difficult. That she wanted too much. If she wanted paying, suddenly she didn't care enough about the children.'

Hester thought of the times she had said there simply wasn't any money. She had been twenty-two, busy arranging tables and buying serviettes with cash someone handed her in an envelope. She had passed on Marjan's phrases as practical information, without asking who was actually making up the shortfall.

'I said it too,' she replied. 'Not to Brecht, as far as I remember. But about her.'

'And did you believe it?'

'Probably.'

Else plainly disliked that word, but Hester could not replace it with a certainty she did not have. She remembered feeling grown-up when she reminded another volunteer of their duty. She no longer knew how often she had done it with Brecht. She explained the distinction. Else unfolded the tablecloth and draped it over the empty chair beside her, as though something needed protecting after all.

'She could be unreasonable too,' she said. 'I'm not going to make her a perfect child. She wanted me available all the time, and if I wanted something myself, it never suited. But her work was hers. She knew that perfectly well.'

Robin got up to fetch water. From the small kitchen she asked where the glasses were. Else replied that they had been on the same shelf for eight years. Robin said eight years was no reason to keep choosing the wrong shelf. Hester heard two cupboard doors. She left the copy where it was and asked what Else knew about Daan.

Else sat straighter. 'What do you want to know?'

'Robin said he'd spoken about Ruben. I saw him yesterday, but he wasn't clear about what he'd seen himself.'

'He told me. Not all at once. First he said things didn't add up. Not much use when someone then starts talking about the bus.'

Robin returned with three glasses and set one down by Hester. 'Gran means he had to go.'

'I mean he wanted to go. Last month he finally said Ruben was already outside. That he'd seen him by the path. I asked why I was hearing it after all these years.'

'What did he say?'

'That he couldn't remember properly any more. Then that he did remember being angry. I told him those were two different answers.'

Hester wanted to call Daan immediately. An appointment, a place, questions in the right order: she was itching for something to organise. She left her phone in her bag. Ellen could approach him. Daan could decide to speak for himself. That did not stop Hester wanting to ask why he had been standing outside while Ruben's name went round inside.

'I said something I knew wasn't true as well,' she said. 'I said Merel was in the kitchen with me when Brecht fell. She wasn't. She only came in afterwards.'

Else moved her glass a little further from the papers. 'Have you told the police?'

'Yesterday.'

'And Merel?'

'She knows. Ruben too.'

'Good,' Else said. It did not sound like praise. 'Then I don't have to ask when you're thinking of starting.'

Robin did not look surprised. Hester had said it in front of her on Tuesday. Yet the sentence had been different here, at a table where someone had kept photographs from before the fall. She had never told Else a lie of her own. She had merely let her live with the collective version, which had amounted to the same thing.

'I thought I was protecting my sister,' Hester said.

'From what?'

'I wasn't sure.'

Else held her gaze. 'So you chose without knowing.'

No answer she could give would make what she had done seem less serious. Hester did not ask to be understood. She took her notebook from her bag and wrote beside her appointment with Fleur: check credits with Robin. She did not write down what Else had just said. She did not want to reduce it to an action point.

Robin had to leave. She carried the tool case to the door herself and came back for her coat. In the hall, Else asked whether she would stay for dinner on Saturday. Robin could not promise yet; she did not know how much work would be left at De Werf. They agreed she would call on Thursday. Three sentences, without reproach or a promise that everything would be better from now on.

At the door, Else put a hand on Hester's arm. 'Your mother will say Brecht was ungrateful.'

Hester noticed the narrow scar at Else's wrist. 'Has she said that to you before?'

'After the funeral. Holding a dish of food. I gave the dish back. Kept the food. I didn't feel like cooking as well.'

She withdrew her hand and pointed to the copy sticking out beneath Hester's notebook. 'Make sure that doesn't get left in some hall.'

Outside, Robin put her case in the car. A worn sticker bore her name, large enough to read across a room. Hester said she would walk back to De Werf. Robin had to get on to Dordrecht.

'Good. I really must go now,' Robin said.

She sat down and placed her phone in its holder. Before pulling the door shut, she said, 'I don't want that letter to end up existing only because she died.'

'What do you want to put with it?'

'That she wanted to move. And that she went to that studio. She'd been there that Saturday. Gran never kept the train tickets, before you ask.'

Hester gave a small smile. 'I wasn't going to.'

'Good.'

The car drove off. Hester walked past the houses, stopped at the first junction and took the copy from her bag. At the top was an ordinary greeting: Dear Mum. She put the sheet in the inside folder of her work notebook, where she usually kept contracts, and called Fleur. They needed to discuss the exhibition text again before it went to the printer.