Who Needs to Hear It

Merel did not wait until eight. At a quarter past seven she stood outside Hester's studio in Nieuwstraat with a bag of vegetables and a rolled apron caught between its handles. Hester had just put pasta in a saucepan. She turned the heat down and let her sister in.

'You've made a group,' Merel said.

'No. I sent everyone a message.'

'There's a difference, so that makes it all right?'

Hester took a second plate from the cupboard. The studio had two of everything and one chair lower than the other. She gave Merel the straight-backed chair. Her sister stayed standing.

'I wanted to say what I told them. To the people who heard it from me at the time.'

'About me.'

'About my lie.'

Merel set the bag on the floor. A leek stuck out from under the table, its green end pointing towards the window. 'You make it sound like part of your paperwork. Something you filled in wrong and now you're allowed to correct.'

Hester put both plates back. 'Do you want me not to go?'

'I want you to understand why I'm angry without immediately giving me a switch to flick.'

The pasta bumped against the lid. Hester turned off the heat. Merel looked at the cooker, automatically picked up a trivet and drew her hand back before touching the pan. She was in a space that belonged to Hester, even if Hester was only living there for a week, and perhaps that alone was reason not to organise anything.

'I should have called you first,' Hester said.

'Yes. And I still wouldn't have been entitled to decide whether you tell the truth. I do understand that.'

She sat down. Hester put the pan on the table with a spoon. They served themselves from it, using the plates she had fetched from the cupboard after all. The sauce came from a jar and the pasta was on the soft side. Merel asked whether Hester ever cooked for herself when no one would be judging her afterwards. Hester said this was the answer.

After a few mouthfuls Merel pushed away her plate. 'I do want to be there. But I'm not sitting beside you as if I endorse your story. And I don't want you explaining what I felt back then.'

'I won't.'

'You did it on Monday. You said we were young. I know how old I was.'

Hester remembered the sentence and how easily she had used it. Their ages had always been a soft blanket over events, especially when she wanted to crawl beneath it herself. Merel had been nineteen, Hester twenty-two. They had been young and they had done things that lasted.

They did not clear the table together. Hester let Merel pick up her bag and put the plates in the sink herself. They walked into the street, each holding her own key. At De Werf the foyer lights were on. Fleur stood by the entrance with a new printout of one caption. She wanted to know whether Brecht's name was in the right place, but folded the sheet when she saw Merel.

Tessa had just got off a train and had asked to join them by phone. Daan sat at the long table with his bag between his feet. Jasper stood by the window. He looked as if he was waiting for someone, until Hester saw his van parked right outside. Marjan sat at the short end, in the place Fleur had occupied on Monday.

'We could have done this at my house,' she said.

'It's not only about us,' Hester replied.

Marjan looked at Merel's bag. 'You've still got that leek. I said I'd make soup.'

'This one's for tomorrow,' Merel said. She put the bag beside her own chair, on the other side of the table.

Fleur laid down her phone. Tessa said she could hear them. Hester named those present so that Tessa knew too, and asked whether anyone objected to her joining them. No one did. Robin had said she would not come. Hester could tell her directly what she had to say; Robin did not want to watch a family decision being made. Ruben had taken the same liberty of staying away. They did not set out empty chairs for them.

Hester stayed standing because she thought sitting would make her voice too quiet. After the first sentence she sat down anyway. This was not an item in a programme for which she needed to reach an entire hall.

'When Brecht fell, I said Merel was in the kitchen with me. She didn't ask me to. I said it myself. It wasn't true. I was in the kitchen. Merel only came in after I heard the bang.'

Marjan opened her mouth. Hester looked at her. 'Let me finish.'

Her mother leaned back. She brought her hands together on the table, a meeting-room posture meaning she was letting the others have their say.

'I didn't see the fall,' Hester went on. 'I don't know exactly where Merel was before that. I made something up that kept the questions away from her. Then I didn't put it right. Yesterday I told the police. Ruben knows too. I want you to stop using my old account as something I saw.'

Jasper looked at Merel. She shifted her chair a little so that she was no longer facing him.

'What time did she come in?' he asked.

'I don't know to the minute.'

'But suddenly you do know it was afterwards.'

'I knew that then. That's what I lied about.'

From the phone, Tessa said, 'Have you written this down too?'

'Yes. I'll send the same facts separately, without an account of this conversation. It's not a joint position.'

'Good.'

Daan leaned forward as though about to speak. Marjan got there first. 'Your sister was upset. You were upset. It's hardly strange for events to get muddled when something like that happens.'

'They're not muddled,' Hester said. 'That's exactly what I want to correct.'

'You don't have to paint yourself as a liar.'

'What would you call it?'

Marjan looked at the phone, then at Fleur. 'I'd call it a clumsy way of protecting someone who needed protection at that moment.'

Merel put both feet flat on the floor. 'You can look at me when you're talking about me.'

'I am looking at you, darling.'

'Now.'

Fleur laid the folded caption on her lap. 'If this gets out, I don't want names being circulated before someone's had a chance to look at it.'

'It's not going out,' Hester said. 'Not from me. I'm correcting what I said directly.'

'But if someone takes a screenshot?'

'It's still my own correction. There's no conclusion about anyone else in it.'

She understood Fleur's question. She also knew how a reasonable question like that could put off the telling for another week: first the wording, then legal advice, then a discussion of the consequences. She had promised no publication. What she owed these people could not wait until everyone involved knew how they wanted to receive it.

Jasper asked whether that meant Merel had been upstairs. Merel answered before Hester could speak.

'It means you can't use one account any more. Hester isn't saying where I was. I'll talk about that myself if I want to.'

'I'm asking you, aren't I?'

'No. You were looking at her.'

He spread his hands on the table. 'I'm trying to understand what's happening here.'

'We all are,' Daan said.

Marjan smiled at him. 'I'm glad you're saying that too.'

Daan looked at the edge of the table. 'I didn't mean what you think.'

There was a moment of confusion. Fleur asked whether there was anything else on the agenda, Tessa could not hear her and Jasper turned his phone face down when a message arrived, without reading it. Hester could have brought the group back as she brought guests back from a buffet. She did not. There was no agenda, and she did not have to manage their discomfort away.

Tessa had to catch her connection. She said she would read Hester's text and not forward it without asking. Hester thanked her. Fleur ended the call and put her phone in her pocket. Daan told Merel he was speaking to the police himself tomorrow. She nodded without asking what he would tell them.

Marjan stood. 'I'd like a moment alone with my daughters.'

'I'm going home,' Merel said.

'That's why I'm asking now.'

'And I'm telling you I'm going.'

Hester stayed seated. Merel picked up her bag and said goodbye to Fleur, Daan and Jasper by name. She told Hester she would be available after lunch tomorrow. It sounded more businesslike than they had ever spoken to each other. Hester said she would remember and let her go.

Marjan stayed beside the chair. 'You're letting her walk off like that.'

'She's got a home of her own.'

'What an unkind remark.'

Fleur went to wash up in the kitchen, though there were only a few glasses. Daan put on his coat and asked Jasper to move his van a little because his bicycle was behind it. Jasper sighed, found his key and went with him. They were all choosing something to do. Hester felt no need to call them back as witnesses.

'You've worried your aunt again too,' Marjan said once the door was shut. 'She rang me this afternoon.'

'I haven't called her.'

'No, but people are talking. And it comes back to me.'

Hester pushed the chairs under the table. She wanted to keep her hands busy, noticed and left the last one out. 'I'm not changing my statement because someone gets worried.'

'Your statement. Can you hear yourself? We're your family.'

'Yes.'

Marjan picked up her bag, a leather one Hester had chosen for her five years earlier. She stroked its handle. 'If you think I'm always obstructing you, you can deal with the practical side yourself too. The old posters, the wooden plinths I offered. I'm not going to keep standing by to help while you treat me like the accused.'

Hester thought of the list she had made on Monday. Marjan's posters had been an addition, not work by Brecht that needed permission. The plinths were meant for the empty corner. She had not collected them yet. She could still choose what remained without them.

'Then we won't use them,' she said.

'I didn't say that.'

'You don't want to lend them.'

'Apparently all my help is being taken the wrong way. I don't want that.'

Hester looked at her mother. Once she would have said no one meant that, then asked when she could collect the things. The empty corner seemed cheaper just now than that conversation.

'I'll leave the corner empty. You don't have to get anything ready.'

Marjan fastened her coat. 'You'll find out how many people feel terribly important now and won't be there later.'

Hester let her walk to the door. She did not ask whether she would get home safely; her mother had her car and lived three streets away. She simply said goodbye. Marjan turned as though the evening required another ending, but when Hester added nothing, she went out.

Fleur came from the kitchen with a tray. 'I can't pay you for this hour,' she said.

'You don't have to.'

'I don't know where your job ends any more.'

'Tomorrow I'll put in writing what work I'm still doing and what I don't consider part of the job. You can confirm it or not.'

Fleur nodded wearily. She asked Hester to walk her to the door; her bicycle was outside and she did not want one last conversation on the pavement. Hester did. As she locked the hall, she saw through the window that Fleur had stopped beside her bicycle again and was pressing the button on its light. It stayed dark.

In the studio the pan was still on the table. Hester left it and opened the materials list. Two extra plinths meant calling another supplier tomorrow. The bill would go to Fleur. She deleted the plinths from the display, marked the freed space on the floor plan and sent Fleur the change. Then she loosened the pasta stuck to the pan under warm water.