The Back Door

Ruben pushed a ball of plastic sheeting from under the door with his shoe. 'Leave that there on Sunday and somebody looking at their phone will trip over it.'

'That's practically everyone.'

'A representative test group, then.'

Hester smiled before she could wonder how it looked. He bent, picked up the plastic and took it to the waste container. She had asked where he would bring a delivery in. An ordinary question. She liked that he claimed no old entitlement from either the question or the building.

The yard was not big enough for deliveries and visitors at the same time, he said. If the caterer unloaded at the back, visitors would have to come later. He looked at the crooked planters and suggested leaving them against the wall. Amir had already cleared a space. Hester drew an arrow on the floor plan.

'Deliveries at the back until noon. No cars after that.'

'I'd actually tell the driver. Otherwise he'll just see a lovely empty space.'

She added it. Once, her pastry supplier had brought twenty crates in through a bridal entrance, straight through the photographers, because nobody had said a red carpet was not meant for sack trucks. Ruben laughed and told her about a maintenance engineer whom the wrong caretaker had let into an empty flat. The residents' committee had spent days asking who was paying for a secret refurbishment.

She still recognised his face when he was enjoying himself. It was not his mouth but the moment when he stopped checking whether the other person understood the joke. She looked back at her floor plan. Ruben was not a chance to make up for the past.

Ruben photographed the back door for the supplier. First he asked whether any numbers or contact details on the wall needed leaving out. Hester pointed to an old note behind the window. He shifted position to keep it out of shot.

'I used to just send a picture,' he said. 'Until I sent a resident's name on a noticeboard to eight companies. You learn not to.'

'At least you learn.'

'Not straight away. First I spent three days explaining why I didn't think it mattered.'

She could laugh at the admission because he did not turn it into a success story. He saved the photograph with the delivery list and asked her to forward it. Then he put his phone away. No interest in the old noticeboard, no urge to point out where they used to write each other's names. That practical restraint made it possible for Hester to ask about the past after all.

He stopped by the gate. The fastening was high up, on a plank paler than the old frame. He opened it and stepped aside. Beyond lay the towpath, between gardens and water. A woman carrying two shopping bags passed without looking at them.

'You used this before, too,' Hester said.

'Yes.'

'After your argument with Brecht.'

Ruben left the gate open. He looked past the houses to the bend where the path disappeared behind a row of garages. Hester saw no reason to pretend her question was still about work.

'I said so at the time,' he replied.

'Not to me like that.'

'You wouldn't see me.'

She could have mentioned the weeks when he had avoided her, the messages through other people, the fact that she too had been only twenty-two. All true. He had not asked her to redistribute the blame for their relationship.

'No,' she said. 'That's true.'

Ruben pulled his coat sleeve over his watch. He had a quarter of an hour before an appointment. She could tell without him making a show of checking.

'I went through the yard onto this path,' he said. 'Not round the front. I didn't want to see anyone. I was angry and I'd said something I couldn't take back.'

'What were you arguing about?'

'An order. And something else, mostly the something else. She'd asked me to move her scenery panels when she left. I'd said yes. Then I wanted her to tell me where she was going and with whom. As though that was part of the deal.'

Hester looked at him. She had thought the argument was about Brecht's criticism of the fundraising evening. Jasper had told her that; or she had made it so herself because it was easier to bear.

'She said I could be her removal man or her interrogator, but not both. I made some remark about Daan. She told me to mind my own relationship. Then I got my coat.'

The shame in his voice asked nothing of her. He was describing something he could no longer alter. That made it harder for Hester to say anything kind.

'And then you heard…'

'A crash. I hadn't reached those garages. At first I thought another panel had fallen over. Then somebody shouted.' He pointed to no precise spot. 'I went back. Through the same gate.'

'Did you see anyone on the path?'

'Daan. Further along. By the water.'

'Did you speak to him?'

'No. Not then.'

Ruben closed the gate and pushed it to check the catch. That was finished; the story was not. Hester wanted to sit him on the bench, have him start again and put the route on paper. She recognised the impulse now. He had not come to add his past to her paperwork.

'That's very different from what people said,' she told him.

'I knew that.'

'I didn't ask properly.'

'You didn't ask anything, Hester.'

She met his eyes. He was not loudly angry. His hands hung at his sides and he did not appear to expect a denial. She was glad he made no kind gesture to help her through the moment.

'You're right.'

'Your mother said we needed to give each other space. Fleur didn't want people taking sides. Suddenly everybody knew how to organise grief neatly. Meanwhile half the town thought I'd pushed her down those stairs.'

'The police didn't say that.'

'I'm talking about the town.'

She heard how her correction had sounded. As though the distinction should have made it hurt less. An official finding had not got him invited to an old friend's table, prevented the questions at a job interview or made Hester return his calls.

'I don't mean that made it any less.'

'I don't know what you mean. That's been the problem for a very long time.'

Amir came into the yard with secateurs and asked if they had finished at the gate. Ruben stepped aside and thanked him for the tour as though they had never moved beyond deliveries. Hester showed Amir the floor plan. They agreed there would be no reception table in the side corridor. From the hall, everyone needed to see the back door or at least reach it without obstructions.

When Amir went inside, Ruben picked up his folder from the windowsill.

'I know you didn't tell them everything,' he said.

Hester had not expected him to say it so simply. 'What do you know?'

'That you were covering something up. Whenever anyone asked where people were, you put on that organiser's voice. Like now, when you say something isn't in the event plan.'

She wanted to say organising was her job. He knew that. He had just spent half an hour being helpful beside her. Her job was not what he meant.

'I've got no evidence against you,' he went on. 'I haven't kept a file. But you weren't just sad. You were afraid somebody would ask the wrong question.'

'I'm still afraid of the wrong questions.'

'At least that's something.'

She stood between the planter and the back door. He could easily pass. Still she stepped aside, as though otherwise he would have to ask for a way through again. Then she opened the door for him.

Daan approached them in the corridor. He carried a flat bag bearing the name of a music shop. His shirt was untidily tucked in and a yellow school name tag hung from his keys. He stopped sharply enough for the bag to bump his leg.

'I'm looking for Fleur,' he said.

'In the foyer,' Hester replied.

Daan looked at Ruben. 'Hi.'

'Hi.'

Two forty-five-year-old men could be every bit as awkward together as two boys, except that the men had better shoes. Hester waited for a handshake, a question about work, any opening at all. Daan pressed the bag more firmly against his leg.

'We've been checking the yard route,' Hester said. 'Ruben told me you were on the towpath that night.'

Daan took his keys from his pocket and put them back. 'I did go outside sometimes. I can't account for every minute—'

'That's not what I'm asking.'

'Sounds like it.'

Ruben was no longer looking at him. 'I have to go.'

'Half past seven tonight,' Hester said.

'It was in the email.'

He nodded to Amir, who was carrying a box out of the storeroom, and went to the front door. Daan waited until the sound of it had faded. Then he asked if Hester needed an extension lead for the small sound system.

'That's why I came. Fleur said it would help if somebody had a look.'

'I'll show you the sockets.'

She did exactly that. Daan tested nothing that did not need testing; he just looked at where the system could go and asked how many microphones. One, Hester said. No presentations with music under people's stories, no compulsory performance. He seemed relieved. He taught at a music school in Vlietdam, he told her. The first-years sang louder than the final-years, and worse, which he considered the natural order of things. She recognised his dry humour and wondered why he had not used it earlier.

She asked only in her head. Aloud, she thanked him and said he could leave the equipment in the storeroom. He left straight away. No visit to the office upstairs, no reminiscing over old photographs. His bag was lighter as he went out.

Late in the afternoon Hester took her overnight bag from the car. Her temporary studio in Nieuwstraat was seven minutes' walk from De Werf, on the ground floor behind an ordinary front door. A landlord had sent a code and excessively long instructions about the bins. She had paid for the week herself, out of Fleur's preparation budget. She had not stayed with her mother, nor invited her mother to debate the decision.

The room had a double bed, a small kitchen and a table with two chairs. An artificial plant stood on a ledge, needing no daylight. She hung up her coat and returned the call to Rotterdam about the table skirts. The problem was solved. Then she bought bread, yoghurt and washing-up liquid at the supermarket: all she had found on the worktop was a dried-out sliver of soap.

When she returned there was a message from her mother. She could always stay; there were clean sheets. Hester replied: Thank you, I'm sorted. No apology. She put the phone on the table and took out her notes on the route at the back. Beside Daan on towpath she put no tick. She wrote: Ruben says this. Daan has not confirmed. The distinction took hardly any paper. She should have made it much sooner.