The Place Left Empty

Marjan opened her fingers. The strap of Robin's bag fell against the side of the doorframe. Hester released the wrist and moved her own foot away from the top step. Robin took the bag by its handle, the strap no longer on her shoulder. She had chosen the stairs while there was still room. That space had to be hers again.

'You don't know what you're doing,' Marjan told Merel. 'You of all people.'

'I know what I said yesterday.' Merel spoke quietly. She stood against the wall with her arms at her sides, not like someone about to ask her mother for something. 'I told them I saw you push her. Brecht was by the office door. You went towards her. You pushed her out, towards the stairs.'

Marjan opened her mouth and looked at Hester. Hester knew that look from dinners when Merel had said something inappropriate: a request to put reality back in place together. She did not look away. She had not seen the fall. She would not claim to now. But she could see Merel before her, the nineteen-year-old who had fled alone to the kitchen, the grown woman who had chosen to speak to Ellen yesterday. She would not let her disappear into Hester's version of protection again.

'You were downstairs,' Marjan said. 'You couldn't possibly see everything.'

'I was on the bottom steps. I saw what you did.'

'She was walking backwards. We were arguing. It happened so fast.'

Hester felt those last words offer themselves as something they could accept. Fast could fit between anything: an action and its consequence, a mother and the deed her daughters had not wanted to know about. But Brecht had not simply walked backwards. There had been a hand. Someone had reached it out.

'You pushed her,' Hester said.

'I didn't mean her to go down the stairs.' The reply was fierce, as if this were the distinction nobody had let her make all week. 'She said I'd used her. In my own office. After everything I'd done for her.'

Robin drew a sharp breath. Hester kept her eyes on her mother but moved her free hand a little downwards, towards the stairs. Don't wait to hear more. Robin looked at the hand and nodded. She put a foot back on the step, her rucksack in front of her now.

Marjan began to turn towards her. Hester did not bar her way with an arm across the opening. She stood beside her, leaving a visibly clear route to the stairs. 'Keep your hands off her.'

'I'm not touching her.'

'You just did.'

Sanne had come to the foot of the stairs. Hester could still see the green pen in the hand pointing towards the foyer. She did not call up that everything would be all right. She simply said Robin could come to her and the police were on their way. Amir stood further back by the hall entrance with two visitors behind him. The building had not emptied. The people below were keeping open the space in which someone could walk away.

Robin went down to Sanne. Only when she was off the stairs did she lower her bag to the floor. She said something Hester could not hear. Sanne indicated the kitchen and did not go ahead; she stayed alongside so Robin could choose the direction herself. Hester watched them enter the side corridor.

Marjan followed them with her eyes. Her breathing was still rapid. She was a woman of sixty-nine who had braced herself against a door, pulled at a bag and could no longer manage the consequences with her tone of voice. Hester felt no satisfaction. She could also see the crease beside her mother's mouth, the patch she always scratched raw in winter. Those details were still there. They simply no longer served as an excuse.

'If you wanted to go to the police straight away, you could just have said so,' Marjan said.

'You tried to stop us,' Hester said. 'That cancellation notice didn't come from Fleur either.'

'Of course not. She wasn't doing anything.' Marjan looked towards the hall below. 'I wanted to stop this happening here. Someone had to step in.'

Merel shook her head. 'I couldn't do that then. You said they'd take me away. That you'd have to explain why I was there. That Hester would lose everything too.'

'You were panicking. I had to calm you down.'

'You shut me up.'

Hester almost heard herself ask why. Why let a nineteen-year-old live like that, why let the other daughter lie, why not say what had happened just once in all those ordinary years. There would be no answer long enough for the question. And Robin was downstairs, an account had to be given of what had happened now, and there was a paper in the office that must not be folded away into a simple misunderstanding.

'Nobody rang straight away,' she said. 'Jasper's told me what happened after the fall.'

'He didn't know what to do himself.'

'And you did. You were giving people orders. You told them what to say.'

Marjan pressed a hand to her chest. 'I didn't know how bad it was.'

'You knew she'd fallen down the stairs,' Merel said. 'You could see that.'

Hester looked at the steps. Jasper had asked whether calling sooner would have made a difference. She had not known. What she did know was that while Brecht lay there, her mother had been giving the others instructions.

New voices sounded in the foyer. Amir mentioned the stairs and said Robin was downstairs. Hester saw two officers come in, a woman first and a man who paused by the front door to speak to Fleur. Sanne returned from the side corridor and pointed up. Only now did Hester notice that her own hands were shaking. She let them drop to her sides.

'We'll stay here until they come up,' she said. 'We're not all going on those stairs together.'

Marjan looked at her. 'Can you hear how you're speaking to me?'

'Yes.'

Hester could hear her own voice: brief and businesslike, as if addressing someone beside a busy loading ramp. She left the answer as it was.

The woman officer climbed the last steps alone. Her colleague stayed halfway up until it was clear where everyone stood. She asked who had been prevented from leaving. Hester said Robin was downstairs and gave her own name. Marjan began explaining that an unpleasant family quarrel had arisen. The officer interrupted without anger and asked everyone to keep clear of the stairs.

She sent Merel down first. Hester pointed towards the open office and the sheet on the desk. 'There's a statement Robin was supposed to sign. I haven't read all of it. My mother stood in front of the door first, then held on to her bag when she wanted to leave. I saw her grab the strap.'

'You'll be able to tell us what you witnessed in a moment,' the officer said. 'For now I'd like you to wait downstairs, separately from the other people involved.'

Hester went. On the stairs she held the handrail, watching the next tread. The other officer came up towards her and continued upstairs. The wood creaked just as it had when Robin walked over it twenty minutes earlier. There had been no sign written into the timber that Hester had missed. There had been agreements she had allowed to shift. She would have to describe that precisely.

Robin sat at the end of the kitchen table, her bag between her feet. Sanne had set down a glass of water, still untouched. Robin looked up as Hester appeared in the doorway. 'I didn't sign anything.'

'I'm glad you're downstairs.'

'She said she wouldn't give me the folder otherwise. And that nobody would ever listen to my version again unless I first admitted I'd misled you.' She wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand. 'As if they're the same thing. That card and what she's done.'

Hester stayed by the door. 'I shouldn't have agreed to let you look upstairs. Not even with Amir there. That wasn't what we'd agreed.'

Robin stared at her bag for a moment. 'I wanted to go. I thought it really was just about a cupboard.'

'I know. I don't want to make you responsible for my part in it.'

The officer downstairs asked Hester for somewhere they could talk separately. She indicated the little table on the far side of the foyer, in plain sight but out of earshot of the kitchen. Robin would give her own account. Hester gave hers from Marjan's arrival onwards. She included the change of plan, the exact words with which she had allowed five minutes, Amir's return. She said what she had heard behind the door, what she had then seen and what Marjan had said on the landing. Where she could no longer be sure of the order of two short replies, she said so.

Hester was still at that table when Marjan came downstairs. The officer beside Hester asked her to remain seated. Marjan was not handcuffed. Her coat lay over her arm and the woman officer walked with her. Her umbrella was still beside the reception table. She pointed to it, and Sanne gave it to the officer rather than directly to her. Hester watched her mother looking round the foyer for a familiar face that might ask whether this was really necessary.

Hester stayed in her chair. Merel stood by the window holding her helmet and did not move. The officer told Marjan they would continue at the station. Hester could not hear exactly what was being decided. She only saw her mother leave through the front door beside someone she could not send off to do something else.

Fleur sent the last visitors home. She did not tell them what had happened upstairs, only that the preview was over and the organisers would be in touch. The man with the panel received his receipt and went out through the ordinary front door. Amir closed the hall to visitors, cleared the way to the rear exit and waited for instructions about the office.

It was later before Hester could return to the kitchen. Robin was standing now. She wanted to go to Else, and to ring herself before anyone else reached her grandmother. Merel offered to cycle with her. Robin said walking would be better; she did not have her bike. Sanne offered to see her to the door, but Robin thanked her and picked up her own bag.

The glass of water remained on the table. Hester did not immediately clear it. First she went to the foyer to check that the little sketch with the oversized lamp was safe. The portfolio still lay open on the reception table. She did not close it. She asked the officer to record what was there and who had seen Marjan bring it. Then she stood beside Fleur to write down who had gone home and who was still in the building.