What You Can Take With You

After four Robin removed the two sketches from their mounts. She had come back alone. Else was at home with her legs on a stool and had sent her so the work would not spend another night in an empty hall. Hester held a box open as Robin slid the protective sheets into place. They worked slowly enough not to make any new creases.

'I'll get yesterday's folder back later,' Robin said. 'Not from your mother. I'll tell them what belonged to mine, then find out what happens next. I've sent the photographs I took downstairs.'

Hester nodded. The ordinary sketches they were packing had already belonged to Robin and Else. There was no reason for those to disappear into the investigation too. She wrote the contents on the outside of the box so Robin would not have to open everything at home to find anything.

'Would you like to come round to Gran's?' Robin asked. 'She asked if there was anything else you wanted to know before you go back. I said I couldn't answer for you.'

'I can this evening. Not for a conversation she has to prepare for.'

'She won't. She's already said not to bring flowers.'

Merel came from the kitchen with a stack of dry glasses. She had offered to help with this last practical round, and nobody had questioned her about yesterday. She set the glasses down and said she was going to her cooking group as usual on Monday. Anouk would lead the washing-up team; Merel wanted to go through the new menu herself. Once Hester would have asked whether she could cope. Now she asked what time she started.

'Nine. I want to be first in. There are things on the wrong shelf, and if I have to look at them for another day I'll say something really unpleasant.'

Robin laughed. Then she asked whether she could come to Merel's sometime, without questions about the past. She had long wanted to know how to keep food hot for thirty without everything going sad. Merel suggested a Wednesday three weeks away and said she could also come without learning anything. They arranged it themselves, their phones above the stack of glasses. Hester held the box and did not say how pleased she was.

Outside, Finn was loading the empty crate from Hester's studio into a bicycle trailer borrowed from someone he knew in Vlietdam. Getting the things back on the train would be awkward; the crate could come a week later with someone driving to Rotterdam anyway. It was not a solution Hester had devised. She asked whether the acquaintance knew that too, and received an indignant look.

'Yes, Mum. I asked. Out loud.'

She gave his upper arm a gentle swat and handed him the last roll of tape. He would not be coming to Else's with her. He had another arrangement and wanted to do his own washing that evening. As they parted he said he did not know whether he would ring his grandmother. Hester briefly felt the old urge to protect him from the consequences, as though it were a decision she could arrange with the right explanation.

'You can think about that for yourself,' she said. 'If you speak to her, you don't have to pass messages between us.'

Finn nodded. 'I wasn't going to.' He hugged her and rode away so slowly that the crate still shifted to one side. He stopped, tightened a strap and carried on. She did not need to call after him.

Ruben did not help with the loading. He waited by the gate to the yard until Hester had time, not in the way but with a shoulder against the wall. She joined him when Robin and Merel carried the last box into the foyer. The towpath lay beyond the gate, visible between the bars. Two cyclists passed side by side until the way narrowed.

'Fleur wants to correct the foundation's history,' Hester said. 'Not tell yesterday's story. Put the right names under the work, and say people were wrong to talk about you as if your row explained what happened afterwards. I want my own false statement mentioned. But I want you to read it first.'

Ruben looked towards the path. 'No text saying I've been cleared of everything. I was never convicted.'

'It won't say that.'

'Or that we're putting a difficult time behind us as a group.'

Hester nodded. She had not intended that sentence, and still knew how easily someone else could add it. 'I'll send only facts I can stand by. Robin decides what can be used from her mother's things. Nobody gets to assume your approval just because they want to publish.'

Ruben rubbed his thumb over a flaking patch of paint on the gate. 'I want my sister to be able to read it. She's always believed me, but at birthdays she had to keep pretending the subject didn't exist. And a few people at my old work. I don't need the whole town delivering its verdict on me.'

'We'll start there, then.'

He looked at her now. 'You don't have to convince everyone in person to make amends. You'll find people saying they knew it all along. I don't want that.'

Hester thought of the people who had congratulated her on keeping such an assortment together. She would have liked to return to those conversations with a new sentence that corrected everything she had let stand. Ruben would not pose beside her as evidence. 'I'll send you the piece. You can say no.'

He nodded and lifted his shoulder from the wall. 'Will you be back in Rotterdam on Thursday?'

'Tomorrow. I've got work on Thursday morning.'

'I'm there for an appointment late in the afternoon. We could go for a walk, if you'd like.'

They agreed he would send her a place and time. Hester thought of her diary for Thursday: work in the morning, nothing after that yet. She could see him without cancelling anything.

At Else's an old towel covered the table for the box of drawings. Robin had started unpacking by the time Hester arrived. Else was on the sofa with her feet on a stool, just as Robin had said, and a bag of frozen peas against her knee. Without getting up she pointed to the empty chair. 'I haven't cooked for you. There's something left in the oven. You'll have to put it on a plate yourself.'

Hester took a small serving of the potato bake and put her plate on the free corner. Robin ate a few mouthfuls standing, then sat too. The drawings stayed wrapped. Part of the evening went on the job Robin was leaving for on Tuesday: high walls needed installing, and they would not fit in any of the lifts. Robin already knew how they would solve it but was angry about the planning. Else listened with the same irritation she brought to a badly repaired tap.

'They ought to think of that sooner,' she said.

'We've told them. Three times.'

'Four won't make it clearer.'

Hester ate and listened. She did not have to manoeuvre towards the moment when they could begin on Brecht. It arrived by itself when Else folded the towel round the box. She said she had used it for Brecht's last move too. Then the plan had been a different room, not her daughter's death. She pulled a loose thread from the edge and wound it round her forefinger.

'I used to think I'd understand if I could only find out,' she said. 'Now I understand a bit more. But I still want her here.'

Hester put down her fork. She could think of nothing to add to Else's wish. 'So do I.'

'I'm sure you do. But you've still got your mother.' It sounded harsh, and Else did not give an apologetic shrug. 'That's not an accusation you need to answer. It's simply true.'

Robin reached across the table towards her grandmother's hand, but Else did not take it at once. First she unwound the thread and smoothed it on the wood. Then she rested her fingers on Robin's.

Hester did not explain her lie again. She said she wanted to mention her own statement in a public correction, only with Robin's permission for anything about Brecht and her work. Else asked whether it would be a piece that set out their entire lives to satisfy other people.

'No. I want you to read it here before anything happens.'

'Send it, then. Robin has a say too. And I don't want a photograph of us beside it to prove everything's all right again.'

'There won't be one.'

Robin looked at the box. 'I do want to use one photograph of the work. Not the letter. And I'm not asking everyone who comes out badly for permission first.'

Hester nodded. She stayed until the plates were in the kitchen. As they said goodbye, Else told her she could return the towel if she carried more things in it at home. Hester pointed to the box: it was here. Else laughed at her own mistake and left the towel where it was.

A message from Marjan waited at the studio. She had asked when they could meet, without anyone else there. Hester read it sitting on the edge of the bed. She did not ring to prove her boundary aloud. She wrote that she wanted no visits for now, including unexpected ones at her home or work. Practical matters could come by message. She would say when she was ready for a conversation, and would not attend alone. She would not arrange or discuss Merel's contact. She reread the text for reproaches that invited an answer and deleted the only question.

After sending it she did not forward it to Merel for approval. She simply said she was returning to Rotterdam and would ring her on Tuesday, if that suited. Merel replied with a time and a photograph of bowls stacked on the wrong shelf. Hester put the call in her diary.

Then she tidied the studio. Tomorrow the key had to be back in the box beside the front door by ten. Her final invoice and the list of received works lay on the table. She put them in separate folders. She washed the red mug that belonged to the studio and left it upside down on the rack. Her own things still fitted the bag she had brought on Monday. She zipped it up, draped tomorrow's clean jumper over the chair and set the alarm.