A Place of Her Own

In March Hester left her phone at the office when she went to the opening. Not deliberately. She noticed at the tram stop and worked out whether she could go back. She could, if she ran, and would arrive after Robin's short welcome. She stayed where she was. The address was on the card in her bag. Nobody needed to track her arrival along the way.

This time the card had come directly from Robin, with her own name on the front. On the back was a handwritten request for Hester to come a quarter of an hour early: one of the plinths was too high and there was still a choice to make. Hester was neither a paying visitor nor hired help, but someone whose eye Robin apparently valued. She had written back to say she would be there and her preference for low plinths was not an official standard.

The exhibition space was in Rotterdam, a narrow former shop with a broad window. Small models stood on plinths inside. Among them rose one full-scale installation, with partial doorways, walls that stopped short and wooden objects that only formed rooms when seen from a particular spot. Robin Boon was written on the window, as large as the title. Brecht's work was not the reason for this exhibition. Robin had designed spaces in which people could wait together without having to look at one another. Hester had seen photographs of the trials, but only here did she understand why the distance between two walls mattered so much.

Robin stood in her socks on a low stool, shifting a light a few centimetres. She looked over her shoulder when Hester came in. 'There you are. Say something unkind about that tall plinth.'

Hester hung her coat on a hook by the door and walked round the plinth. On top was a model of a narrow passage, open towards the window. 'I can't see inside without standing on tiptoe.'

'Thank you. That's what I said.' Robin stepped off the stool and pointed to a clear place on the floor. 'The low one's there. We'll need to share the weight.'

They lifted the model together at the points Robin indicated. Hester felt the wood flex and kept her hands still until Robin nodded. There was a splinter at the back of the lower plinth. Robin covered it with tape, made a note on a list and slid the model until the edges lined up. Then she put on her shoes.

'You haven't got a phone,' she said as Hester searched her bag for the card.

'Forgotten it.'

'How lovely. Now I can't ask you to take another photograph.' She gave her a printed sheet. 'These have already been taken. By someone paid to do it, which strikes me as an excellent system.'

Hester read the first lines. Robin had written clearly and briefly about her choice of materials, without making her mother's death an origin story. Right at the bottom was an acknowledgement of the people who had helped. Hester appeared among them, after the joinery workshop and before Else. She pointed to her name.

'You said that first passage was too narrow to let someone pass,' Robin said. 'You were right. I like to credit people who've helped me think.'

People Hester did not know began to arrive. A woman with a tape measure in her coat pocket asked Robin about the joints between the wooden panels. Two students wanted to know whether they could step inside the large installation. Robin answered the practical questions first, then said she would talk in ten minutes about where the work had begun. She had already draped her grandmother's coat over a chair. Else was in the small room at the back, where a fellow maker had found her a stool.

Hester went to greet her. Else had her coat over the chair beside her. She pointed out a photograph on the wall of Robin at a workbench, a saw in her hand. 'She looks like her mother there. So cross when someone takes a picture while you're trying to hold something straight.'

'I thought she was looking at the saw.'

'She told me the photographer kept saying her name wrong. Five times.' Else moved her bag from the next chair. 'Sit down for a bit. You're walking as if you're still at work.'

Hester sat. She had come from a meeting about a neighbourhood festival whose budget could not cover all its plans. She had proposed a paid assistant instead of promising to absorb the work herself. At first the client had said no, then reduced the programme. She had kept the job. That still took getting used to: a limit that did not immediately lead to loss, but gave no guarantee of being liked either.

At the office her phone lay beside a folder containing a letter about the investigation. It had come last week. The investigation into Brecht's death and the events of September was not complete; no decision on prosecution had yet been communicated. Marjan had been interviewed, witnesses had faced further questions. Hester did not know her mother's part only through that formal process. Merel had told her what she saw, and on the landing Marjan herself had no longer been able to deny the push. What could be proved in law, and what decisions would follow, was still unknown.

Else did not ask about the letter. She had her own contact and knew what mattered to her. She said she had arranged for the drawings to be stored properly, in flat boxes at the top of her wardrobe rather than a shed. One little sketch now hung in her passage. The oversized lamp with the little person beneath. She passed it every morning on her way to fetch the post.

'I still think it's funny,' she said. 'For a while I'd forgotten I could simply find something of hers funny.'

Merel came in carrying a red envelope. She wore a coat Hester did not recognise and had had her hair cut shorter, simply because the old length kept getting in her food. She hugged Else, bumped Hester with her shoulder and left the envelope beside Robin's sheet. It contained a voucher for a DIY shop, she said. Flowers seemed awkward in a space where things mostly were not meant to stand on a windowsill.

Hester asked about the new Wednesday group. Merel pulled a face and described a participant who wanted more butter in everything. Then she showed her a photograph of her own new worktop, on wheels. She had been able to pay for it from the programme's budget. Bram had helped assemble it at home; she had decided where it would go. She did not ask Hester whether she had been sensible, and Hester offered no unsolicited advice about its height.

When Else waved to someone on the other side of the room, Merel sat down beside Hester. 'I've written to Mum saying I won't be visiting for now,' she said. 'Not at Easter either. I'm telling you so you know, not so you can do anything about it.'

'I understand.'

'And I'm not drafting a joint reply to her letter. Mine wasn't the same as yours.'

Hester nodded. For so long they had compared their mother's words as if a single secret instruction manual lay hidden somewhere inside them. Now each had the right to reply for herself, or not to reply at all. Hester had seen Marjan once in February, at a neutral place, with someone else present. She had left after forty minutes when her mother started talking about what she said Merel had misunderstood. Since then she had kept their contact limited and in writing. She had not made her mother a stranger. Nor had she given her access again to every room of her life.

'I didn't mean to start on her today,' Merel said.

'You've said two sentences.'

Merel counted on her fingers and shook her head. 'Four.' She stood to give Robin the envelope. Hester stayed seated a moment longer and laughed at the correction. For the first time in months, a conversation about their mother could end with something other than the question of who had to ring now.

Beside the entrance, among the exhibition sheets, lay a slim booklet about De Werf. Robin had not put it there as part of her work; Fleur had brought a few copies for anyone asking about the background. Hester picked one up. The origins of the old works had been checked afresh. Brecht was credited as the maker of her own designs; other names had been retained or left open where there was no certainty. The accompanying text had been published with Robin's consent. Hester's own correction appeared with her name beneath: in 2004 she had falsely stated that Merel was with her in the kitchen. She had now withdrawn that statement. The booklet also said that Ruben's departure through the rear was supported by separate recollections and the surviving photographs; the old social suspicion had never been an established account of what happened.

After publication she had sent the text to the people Ruben wanted to share it with. His sister had replied that she was keeping it. Two others had said nothing. One man claimed he had always believed Ruben. Hester had not taken that up. The correction remained available, including where the pleasant version of the foundation's history had once been. There was no new group photograph beside it. Fleur had put her name to her own part and had not blamed the wording on Hester when criticism came.

Ruben arrived as Hester put the booklet back. His coat was still buttoned and he held a small parcel. 'I haven't bought a plant,' he said. 'You'd all trip over it.'

'Merel's gone for something useful too.'

'Too late to be original, then.' The parcel contained a good pencil and a sharpener, chosen on Robin's own advice. He put it beside the envelope and hung up his coat. Since that first walk on Thursday they had seen each other from time to time. Sometimes they went a week without speaking; sometimes they ate together on a Tuesday because they happened to be in Rotterdam. Hester knew where he lived; he knew which days she had no time. They were close enough now not to have to keep going over the past.

'Have you eaten?' he asked.

'I could have something afterwards.'

'Me too. But first I'd like to know if I'm allowed through there.' He pointed to the large wooden installation. 'There's no sign saying keep out.'

Hester laughed and said he would have to ask the maker. He did. Robin beckoned him to the broad opening and showed him where not to put his hand. Then she clapped once to ask for everyone's attention. She gave her name, thanked the people from the workshop and asked the visitors to look from different angles. The welcome took less time than a song. Then everyone started moving again.

Else wanted to see inside the large installation too. Robin shifted a panel so she would not have to squeeze round the narrow side. Hester was already getting up, but waited a moment to see where her hands were needed. Robin indicated the end of the wall. Hester took hold there. Together they steadied the panel while Else stepped through the opening and began to laugh in surprise on the other side.

From her chair it had looked like a passage. From this angle there turned out to be a little table, with a small stool beside it. Else asked whether she could sit on it. Robin said the stool was part of the work and not fit to sit on; there was a sturdy one behind the door. Hester fetched it and shifted one leg across a gap in the floor until it stood firmly. Else sat, tucked her bag underneath and beckoned them to come and look from her place too.