A House Is Not Evidence

Sofie was already at the door of Bremstraat 18 when Lena parked her bicycle across the road. Yara had borrowed a small van. Its rear doors were open; two blankets and a roll of tape lay inside. Ria came out of her house with a packet of biscuits nobody had asked for.

‘There’s coffee too,’ she said. ‘Just tell me when you’re ready for a break.’

Sofie took the biscuits and passed them to Yara. ‘I will.’

They had agreed access with her for that Saturday. The housing association had arranged for the keys to be checked, and she could collect her things. What happened next with her housing file was still undecided. The house hadn’t become a police storeroom, or a museum of what other people thought should be remembered. Sofie held her own key to the door, waiting until Yara was beside her before turning it.

‘Would you come into the kitchen for a minute?’ she asked Lena.

‘If you’d like me to.’

‘Just to look at the patch beside the back window. I want to know whether anything’s really changed. We’ll pack the rest ourselves.’

Lena nodded. This wasn’t a new commission to pronounce the house sound at a glance. She could explain what she saw and the limits of that observation. Other people were handling the independent assessment and the work.

The air inside was heavy with too little ventilation. Sofie opened the front window and stood for a moment with her hands on the sill. An empty shopping bag now sat where, on her second visit, Lena had recognised traces of her first. The kitchen chair had been pushed against the wall.

Yara set down a box and wrote kitchen on its end in thick marker. Were the plates going? Yes, Sofie said, including the blue ones with the worn rims. A colleague had given them to her when she moved in with her partner and no longer needed two dinner services.

Lena didn’t open the cupboard herself. She waited for Sofie to beckon her to the back window. The curtains were still there. As Sofie let in the light, Lena could see the red repair patch. Sofie lifted the curtain and ran the hem between her fingers.

‘I’ve packed the apron too,’ she said. ‘The one I cut this from. It’s with my work clothes, though I haven’t used it for work in ages. I’d pulled the curtain out of that sticking door and thought the tear wasn’t too bad. It just kept getting bigger.’

She handed Lena the hem to feel how thin the rest had become. Then she let it drop and pointed to the damp patch. Lena looked in the same light as on 6 May. It didn’t seem larger. A change of colour at the edge might be from drying, but without measurements or a check on the repair she wouldn’t draw a conclusion.

‘I don’t want to write something down again without being sure of it,’ she said.

Sofie nodded. ‘I wasn’t asking for a letter. I just didn’t want to be told again I was seeing it all wrong.’

‘There is a patch. It was here when I first came. It didn’t make the whole house unfit to live in then.’

Sofie took her upstairs. In the bedroom she looked at the window, then at the bed. The mattress had a clean cover. A half-full laundry basket stood beside the wardrobe. Sofie folded her arms and stayed in the doorway.

‘I don’t know if I want to sleep here again.’

Lena said nothing. Yara came upstairs and asked whether to take the bed legs off for the van. Not yet, Sofie said. The bed wasn’t going today. First she wanted her clothes, her own paperwork and what she needed for work.

‘Otherwise it’s as though picking up that box means I’ve left again,’ she said.

Yara leaned against the door frame. ‘Then we can leave the box for a bit.’

Sofie went to the wardrobe, took her work clothes from the shelf and laid them on the bed. She had made her own arrangements with her employer about her shifts. After the weekend she wanted to start gradually again. For now that meant a longer journey from Duinwaard. She had checked it, she said, and talked it through with someone at work. Not everything she had to do next belonged in a file.

Lena went down to help Yara with the packed boxes. Sofie stayed upstairs. Soon Lena heard her on the phone, discussing shift times and someone who had already swapped. Her voice quickened around ordinary words about arriving and getting changed.

Yara pulled a blanket from the van. ‘I haven’t heard her talk like that in two weeks,’ she said.

‘Like what?’

‘Annoyed with someone without immediately thinking they might hurt her.’

She spread the blanket over the top box. Upstairs, Sofie said she wasn’t doing the other person’s work as well on her first morning back. Lena hoped the conversation was as ordinary as it sounded. She wouldn’t ask which colleague it was or what they had agreed.

Ria came in only after Yara called her. She made coffee and put the biscuits on the table. Starting to ask about Henk’s last evening, she stopped halfway through.

‘You don’t need to tell it again,’ she told Sofie, who was coming down. ‘I forget how often you’ve had to.’

Sofie sat in the empty chair. ‘Today I want to talk about boxes.’

Ria nodded and asked what would fit in the little van. They began debating a lamp with a crooked shade. Yara wanted it kept separate; it couldn’t go between the boxes against a window. It could sit on her lap, Sofie said. Ria thought there might be some peculiar fine for that. Lena knew of no such rule, but suggested securing it in a blanket. Yara asked her to fetch the blanket from the van.

Nora met them on the pavement. She had been to her father’s house with her son and didn’t stop to peer into number 18. That afternoon she was going to Ria’s with a few neighbours. She wanted no gathering at the steps, no speeches in front of a bank of microphones. People who had known Henk could bring a photograph or something else.

‘Ria’s making soup,’ she said. ‘I said I wasn’t sure, with this weather. She’s making it anyway.’

Sofie asked whether she could come briefly and leave when she wanted. Everyone could, Nora said. More quietly she added that she would like to see Sofie, if she felt able.

They carried the lamp to the van together. Nora held the blanket while Lena settled its base between two sturdy boxes. Yara waited to shut the door until Sofie had seen where it was. Sofie looked, nodded and said it was fine.

At Ria’s table, the soup duly appeared. The garden was too wet to sit in. Nora’s son was playing at a friend’s. That morning he had chosen to send a photograph of a pancake in mid-air above a plate. His grandfather held the plate, half his face outside the picture. Nora propped it against the sugar bowl.

Cor brought a plain frame he had made in the workshop. He hadn’t seen the picture and the frame was too small. Without comment he took it away to make another. The ordinary awkwardness helped Lena more than a perfectly arranged memorial table would have done.

The stories contradicted one another. Ria said Henk had always been punctual. A neighbour said he wouldn’t turn up until nearly noon on a Sunday if there was a garden fence to work on. Nora said nine was early enough for him, but he hadn’t wanted to ring other people out of bed. They couldn’t agree. Ria brought more soup.

Sofie stayed over half an hour. Henk had kept asking whether her bicycle tyre was soft, she said, even if she’d pumped it up the night before. Nora laughed. He’d done it to her too, though for years she’d ridden on tyres you could hardly judge by looking at them.

Lena said nothing about the appointments notebook. She had felt she ought to contribute something valuable about Henk, then realised, looking at the sugar bowl, how little she had known him. She could pass a bread roll and listen to people who could imitate his voice. When Sofie got up, Yara rose with her. Nobody asked why they were leaving so soon.

Mieke had time for a short meeting late that afternoon. Sofie had asked Lena to stay for the technical questions. The papers in the office were different from the week before. There was a proposal for further help with finding a home, but Sofie still had conditions to understand and things she wanted set out in writing.

Beneath it was the transport inventory Sofie had requested for her belongings. Mieke pushed it towards her. Two removals workers had emptied the living room and taken the fridge on Saturday 16 May. Noordhuis had commissioned them; Niels had arranged access and the renovation request. The confirmation said the furniture was still with the removals company, in storage outside Rietdam. The upstairs rooms hadn’t been cleared.

Sofie read the names of the items. ‘So they did find my sofa. All I got was that they were making enquiries.’

Lena thought of asking Pieter the same question and getting no answer. Now she knew the date and the instructions for the removal. It didn’t explain Thursday evening by the steps. It answered what had happened to Sofie’s things two days later.

‘The little table as well,’ Sofie said. ‘It just says side table. It’s my grandmother’s table.’

Mieke added that to her notes. Sofie wanted her furniture back, but not a van outside a house she wasn’t ready to live in. She chose to leave it in storage until delivery could be arranged to somewhere she wanted to live. First she wanted the fridge measured. She had bought it herself; nobody else was to decide it should be disposed of without asking her.

‘Who pays for the storage and delivery?’

‘I’ll get an answer and have it included in the agreement,’ Mieke said. ‘You won’t be asked to agree to costs just so we can call it settled today.’

Sofie drew the list closer and put a mark beside the table. She wanted to check the inventory herself before agreeing to its return. Mieke noted who they needed to contact about visiting the storage facility.

‘I want to be able to say I don’t want to go back,’ Sofie said. ‘Without that meaning I left voluntarily in March after all.’

Mieke took off her glasses. ‘Those are different things. The correction of that date stands. And we discuss what you want now, once you’ve been properly informed. You don’t have to choose a home to make an incorrect file look right.’

Sofie read the line beneath her name. It asked her to confirm that she wanted to explore living somewhere else. She didn’t reach for a pen. First she asked what happened if no suitable home was available for a while, and who would discuss her temporary expenses.

Mieke couldn’t answer everything immediately. She wrote down two questions for the housing association. Until there were clear answers, those conditions weren’t settled. Sofie also asked about getting to her early shifts. Otherwise she couldn’t respond to an offer at the other end of Rietdam, she said. The name of the town wasn’t enough.

Lena looked up when Sofie asked for help assessing a possible flat. She would gladly go through an initial practical checklist with her. For a fresh independent inspection, Mieke could find someone who hadn’t been involved in the earlier file.

Sofie leaned back. ‘I was asking whether you’d look at the stairs and windows. But I understand.’

‘I’ll come with you if you want me to. But if there are doubts about the building, someone who isn’t involved needs to assess them.’

Yara made a note on her phone of questions Sofie wanted to ask at a viewing. Sofie didn’t want a window that only opened if you moved a bed first. She wanted somewhere for her bicycle, and no noise from a loading bay under her bedroom. The wishes of someone looking for a home. Lena could hear the difference from a list of things Sofie needed protecting from.

Only after the discussion did Sofie sign to acknowledge receiving the proposal, adding that her questions remained unanswered. Mieke made her a copy. It wasn’t a dramatic end to the afternoon. It was an action that still left room for a proper answer.

Outside, Sofie asked Lena to carry her bag as far as the van. Yara waited by the open door. Lena put it where Sofie wanted it and went back to her bicycle. The bed legs weren’t in the van. The lamp was, exactly where Sofie had had it secured.