Merel's Own Door

The door to the cooking space was open, exactly as Merel had written. Hester did not go in straight away. A sheet of next week's menus hung inside. Wednesday was crossed out; something about pulses had been added for Thursday. A corner had been torn from the bottom, not neatly enough to be a tear-off slip. Someone had probably needed a telephone number.

Four people stood round a table of food containers. Merel wore an apron with a large wet patch down the front. She held a lid in one hand and a marker in the other. When she saw Hester, she pointed to a chair by the door.

'Five minutes,' she said. 'Preferably seven.'

Hester sat and put away her phone. She had wanted to take her bag into the kitchen, as she always did when she arrived somewhere. Now it stayed on her lap. There was no job for her. Not even a coat still needing a hook; she could keep it on.

A man at the table wanted to take the leftover portions to his neighbour. Merel asked how many people ate there. He said two and held up three fingers. Merel fetched a fourth container.

'Then they'll have some for tomorrow too. But don't leave it in the fridge for three days and complain to me that it's gone sour.'

The man chuckled and made way for a woman who started on next week's rota. She could not be the only one washing up again. Someone else was only coming for half an hour, and apparently that half-hour counted as helping. Hester recognised the tone in which a small practical objection acquired just enough history to become a major conflict.

Merel put down the lid. 'You're right. The washing-up isn't automatically yours. The rota was wrong. But we're not discussing someone who's already gone home.'

'I'm not discussing her. I'm telling you what it says.'

'Then we'll change what it says. I'll call her about her hours tomorrow.'

She pulled the rota towards her and asked which days the woman could stay. She named two. Merel crossed out one box, reinstated another and asked whether she had permission for the change. It sounded funny, almost excessively formal. The woman laughed and said she would very much like to say an official yes to that today.

Hester had wanted to help with a neater sheet or a schedule on her laptop. She saw how quickly the group resolved it themselves and was ashamed of wanting to. Her sister did not need better organisation because Hester was watching.

When the last portions had been divided, Merel checked the fridge and picked up a crate of empty jars. She asked the man still by the door whether he could take them to the bottle bank. He said his back was bad. Merel set down the crate and took an empty cardboard box from beneath the table. She gave him that to flatten.

'I can do that,' he said indignantly, as though otherwise she would be taking something too precious away.

'That's why I'm asking.'

They agreed the key would stay in the same place on Friday. When everyone had gone, a pan remained on the cooker and three spoons lay in the sink.

Merel shut the door and turned the lock. She hung the key on its hook. 'So you haven't brought anything.'

'That's what your message said.'

'You can do it.'

Hester took off her coat. 'I passed up three shops on the way. That counts as an effort.'

Merel smiled. She pointed to the coat rack and filled two bowls. The food was still warm. She had not eaten yet herself, she said, and did not want to wait any longer because this was going to be a difficult conversation. They put the bowls on a table covered at one end with wipe-clean cloth.

Hester ate lentils with tomato and a piece of bread Merel toasted over a flame until the edges darkened. She could have eaten something in the studio, but had not. That now seemed an unusually sensible decision.

'It's good,' she said.

'I know. There's enough salt. The first pan was for people who aren't allowed it. This one's for people who'd otherwise chuck it in themselves.'

'I didn't just mean the food.'

'I suspected as much. Eat first anyway.'

The community room was on a street of ordinary houses. Through the high windows Hester could see only the top of a window opposite and the light coming on behind it. No view of water, no stairs where she had to position other people in her mind. This building had nothing to do with De Werf. She understood why Merel wanted to talk here.

On a windowsill stood two pots painted by the participants, with herbs in them. The basil looked unwell. Hester asked whether it was still alive. Merel said a plant here could only be declared dead once three volunteers agreed, which generally meant another month's watering.

For a few minutes they ate without mentioning Brecht. Hester asked how long Merel had been in this room. She roughly knew the answer, and the roughly was embarrassing. Five years, Merel said. First one afternoon, now two afternoons and an evening. It paid a little and fitted round her other work. Bram sometimes helped with the carrying, not with the programme itself.

'You do that better,' Hester said.

'That's not why. I want something of my own here. He usually understands.'

'Usually?'

'He can be very handy in a way that takes half an afternoon.'

Hester laughed. She thought of Ruben going back for the sack truck and did not say it. Her sister was not talking about a generic kind of man; she was talking about someone she shared a daily life with, of which Hester mostly heard the headlines.

Merel's phone rang on the worktop. She looked at the screen, left it for a moment and answered after all. Hester could not hear Marjan's voice, but recognised her from Merel's first reply.

'No, I'm not coming to help tomorrow.'

A short pause.

'I've said that. It hasn't changed because Hester's here.'

Hester broke the last piece of bread in two and ate one half.

'You can call her yourself if you want to ask her something,' Merel said. 'No. Not through me.'

She listened again. Her apron was still tied round her waist, the wet patch now dried to a dull mark.

'You'll have to arrange transport for those things yourself. I haven't offered them. Nor have I promised them on your behalf.'

When she hung up, she put the phone in a drawer and shut it. 'She wants me to bring her boxes. Says she doesn't want anyone thinking she's withholding things. So I have to transport them.'

'You don't have to—' Hester began.

Merel looked at her.

'You've already said no,' she corrected herself.

'Yes.'

Merel picked up the bowls and put them in the sink. When Hester got up to help, she said two spoons could go in the machine tomorrow. She wanted to sit now. She moved her chair to the clean part of the table and sat with her back to the kitchen.

Hester sat opposite. She did not ask whether Bram knew she was here. Once she would have asked as a courtesy that immediately established who knew what already. Merel brought him up herself.

'I told him I'd be speaking to you tonight. I haven't told him everything. He didn't like that. He's allowed not to.'

Hester cupped the glass of water still on the table. 'Do you want me to take you home afterwards?'

'No. I've got my bicycle. I want to be able to leave by myself.'

'All right.'

'And I don't want you going straight to Mum afterwards.'

Hester looked up. There was something behind that which no longer belonged to work schedules. 'Why do you think I would?'

'Because you always turn difficult things into the next thing to do. At least then you can move. You're very good at getting things done when you're furious.'

She had wanted to say Merel had her wrong. Instead she thought of the message she had sent on Wednesday without calling her first. Of warning Ruben about Daan's call, as though his response was part of her job too.

'I won't go to her,' she said.

'Or call.'

'Or call.'

Merel tugged at her apron knot. The cord was stuck from having been wet. Hester left it alone, even when her sister pulled the wrong loop. Merel freed it, folded the apron over the chair and sat down again.

'I don't know whether I'll tell it in the right order,' she said.

'You don't have to.'

'It'll have to make some sort of sense to the police.'

'Then they'll ask what they need to know. I don't know how it'll be for you.'

Merel ran a fingertip along a scratch in the table covering. 'That's the first sensible thing you've said to me about the police.'

'I haven't been doing this long.'

'I have. Not going to the police. Thinking about what happens if I do.'

Hester felt how badly she wanted to hurry towards whatever Merel was circling in words. She wanted to know whether her sister would admit something, say something about someone else, whether her own great fear had any basis left. She could not put that fear to Merel as a question.

'I can listen,' she said. That sounded too polished. 'I can try to keep my mouth shut, I mean.'

Merel looked at her, and this time she did not laugh. She took a paper serviette from the table and rolled it up. Then she flattened it, unused.

'You always said we were in that kitchen together. To me too. Not the whole sentence, but that we were there and Mum was upstairs and it was awful. You made it a place I had to step back into.'

'I know.'

'No. You didn't know yesterday. Yesterday your lie belonged to you. It did. But you'd made me carry it with you for years.'

Hester looked at the herbs on the windowsill. The dead or not yet dead basil stood in a pot with yellow spots. She could give her sister a precise explanation now of how she had come to do it. That was what she always did when the consequences no longer fitted the intention.

'I did,' she said.

'I used it too. I let you answer when people asked where I'd been. That was easier. Later it became something we supposedly did for each other.'

'You don't have to divide it equally.'

'And you're deciding that again.'

Hester closed her mouth. She did not nod at once, because even that could look like permission. Merel was not trying to absolve her. She was looking for a place in her own story that Hester had not already occupied.

Outside, someone crossed the street and used a bicycle bell as a greeting. Merel waited for the sound to fade. She looked at the door and the key on its hook. Then she drew her chair closer to the table.

'I want you to let me finish telling it first,' she said. 'Even if you think you know what I mean.'

'Yes.'

'And if I don't know something, don't ask me to guess.'

'I won't.'

Merel lowered her eyes to her hands, then looked up. Hester moved her glass aside so there was nothing to retreat behind. She thought once more of her phone in her bag, of all the people who knew nothing of this table now. Then she left the bag where it was and waited for her sister.