At the Other End of the Line

At three, Lena left the phone where it was when it rang. For the past hour she had picked it up at every little sound; now the ringing went on longer than a notification and suddenly she had no idea how to begin. The screen showed the number Mieke had given her for the call she had arranged.

‘Lena Wouters.’

‘I don't know if I'm interrupting your work.’

She did not recognise the voice at once. During the house visit there had been running water, doors and traffic around it. Now there was just a quiet voice, and somewhere behind it the sound of someone putting down a saucepan.

‘You're not.’

‘It's Sofie. From the house.’

Lena gripped the edge of the table. She could not feel glad and think of the right first question at the same time. Sofie said Mieke had offered to listen in. She had preferred to ring on her own first. A friend was with her, but not beside the phone.

‘Thank you for calling,’ Lena said. ‘Are you safe at the moment?’

‘Yes. I'm safe here.’

‘You don't have to tell me where here is.’

A door closed at the other end. Lena heard Sofie breathe out.

‘I thought you'd ask about the house straight away.’

‘I have questions about the report. But what I most wanted to know was whether you've got help from someone you trust.’

‘Mieke said the report had been changed.’

Lena did not reach for the document. Her phone had lain among the papers all morning; now she did not want to begin with the sentence someone had used to write Sofie out of her home.

‘My original describes our visit. You were at home. We looked at the leak. I didn't record you as having left on 31 March.’

‘I'd had dinner at my brother's the day before that. He still asked whether I'd brought my key. Later he acted as though I'd stopped living there long ago.’

Lena caught the sadness only after the sentence was over. She wanted to say she had spoken to Ruben, but did not know whether that would reassure Sofie.

‘I saw your brother on Friday. He said he didn't know where you were. I told him it was up to you how you wanted to be contacted.’

‘He kept asking. Where I was, what I was going to do. And whenever I mentioned my house, he'd tell me to be practical.’

There was a small tap. Sofie said she had put her glass on the windowsill. Through her own window Lena could see an empty trailer in the yard. Unless she asked, she could not know whether there was anything to see from Sofie's window. She left it that way.

‘I meant to ask you about that damp patch,’ Sofie said. ‘On 6 May. You said it didn't necessarily tell you what you'd find behind the wall. I thought, at last, someone who isn't just making things up.’

Lena saw the strip of curtain again, the red repair and the blue loop on Sofie's key. She did not mention the curtain as a test. Sofie brought it up herself when she asked which photographs were in the report.

‘You asked whether I wanted the things at the edges left out. I said the pictures were for the damage. Not for a brochure advertising an empty house.’

The voice, their earlier conversation and the way she spoke about the visit all fitted the woman Lena had met. The contact Mieke had arranged provided a check an unknown number alone could not. She did not need to make Sofie prove, detail by detail, that she had lived her own life.

‘Some photographs have been cropped differently. And text has been replaced. I've written to the client about it and given the police the documents. My name is on the version that's wrong. I should have checked it.’

‘That doesn't change anything at my front door.’

‘No.’

Sofie was silent for a few seconds. Lena left her explanation unspoken. If she described how Jip's accident had come between the email and the export, Sofie would be asked to weigh something that was not her burden.

‘Did you take my key?’

‘No. It was in the kitchen drawer. I left it there.’

‘That's where it was meant to stay. If my brother came for it, at least he couldn't say he couldn't get in.’

Lena did not ask why Ruben needed to go inside. Sofie went on without prompting.

‘I hadn't left the way they wanted me to. I had no other house to go to. There were proposals, sums of money, a form they wanted ready in advance. Whenever I asked where I was supposed to go, it was back to talking about money.’

‘Did you sign anything?’

‘I want to go through that with Mieke first. There are papers I can't look at now without getting angry. Some I only received; others I sent back with comments. I don't want to say I haven't put my name to anything and then find I've forgotten a sheet.’

‘That's fine. She can go through them with you.’

Sofie told her about the electricity. The fridge had grown warm and the kitchen clock had stopped. She had been told it was because of renovation work. She had taken food to someone else's house, charged her phone elsewhere and treated it as a temporary nuisance.

‘That was 11 May,’ she said. ‘I know because I was on an early shift. I've got a message about the disconnection. I don't need the clock to tell me.’

On a fresh sheet Lena wrote only 11 May. Not the time the clock had stopped. She told Sofie to keep the messages and discuss them directly with Mieke or Anouk. She would not forward them to Noordhuis on Sofie's behalf.

‘So not another meeting where he has to be there?’

‘Who do you mean?’

‘Niels.’

Sofie said his name without hesitating, then lowered her voice. He still had keys, she said. He knew her shifts. If she slept elsewhere, he treated it as proof the house was empty. If she stayed, her presence was an obstacle to work already booked in.

‘He could ring on a Tuesday and be perfectly pleasant. I'd have to help him, or my brother would be in trouble too. On Wednesday he'd say it was all my own choice.’

‘Did he threaten you?’

‘Yes. I've still got the messages. It wasn't all in messages.’

Lena picked up her pen and immediately put it down again. She did not want to lead Sofie through those moments just to complete her own picture. She said Anouk wanted to speak to her separately; Sofie could decide whether she wanted Mieke's help making contact.

‘I can't prove the way someone looks at you,’ Sofie said.

‘You can say what he said and did. What you saw yourself. Keep the messages too. You don't have to solve the whole investigation first.’

‘Easy for you to say.’

‘I don't know what it was like for you.’

Sofie seemed to shift in her chair; Lena heard a long scrape. In the silence that followed she took the phone briefly from her ear to check they were still connected. She felt awkward, unable to tell whether Sofie was thinking or had gone.

‘Henk's dead,’ Sofie said.

‘I've heard.’

‘What did they tell you?’

‘That he was found by the back steps. That he might have fallen. I've told Anouk what I know about him helping residents. I wasn't there.’

Sofie did not answer at once. Something sounded in the kitchen again. Lena heard another voice, too far away to make out the words.

‘I don't want to tell everyone about this now,’ Sofie said. ‘Once I start, people put it all in their own order. Ruben did that with something ordinary. My move.’

‘You don't have to tell me now.’

‘I left that evening. Thursday. The fourteenth of May. I couldn't stay there.’

Lena planted her foot flat on the floor. She looked at the date on her sheet and felt how much she wanted to write between those two lines.

‘I'm staying with a friend. Outside Rietdam. She's known me a long time. She's helping me work out who I can talk to.’

‘I'm glad to hear that.’

‘She says I can't go on sitting here like this.’

‘Is that what you want too?’

Sofie gave a short, joyless laugh. ‘I want to go to work without someone using my rota to arrange a meeting with him. I want a door I can shut. I don't want to have to tell everything before I'm allowed to ask whether I can have somewhere to live.’

Lena had no answer ready. She could feel the familiar offer forming: I'll look into it for you. Her experience of houses did not entitle her to choose Sofie's next home as well.

‘Mieke can discuss those questions with you, separately from what you tell the police. I can explain what my report should have said and what I saw. Beyond that, I shouldn't decide what you do first.’

‘Have you told my brother yet?’

‘That you're alive? No. I didn't know until you rang.’

‘Don't tell him my address. Even if he says I've said it's all right.’

‘I don't know your address. And I won't ask for it for him.’

Sofie said she would let him know herself that she was safe. Not immediately, during this call. First she wanted to talk to someone with no stake in how her statement sounded. Her friend had said the same: your brother is your brother, but that does not make him the best person to help you arrange this.

Lena gave her Anouk's name. Mieke already had the number; Sofie need not receive and save a message from Lena if she did not want to. They agreed who could make contact after this call. Sofie allowed her to tell Mieke they had spoken, and Anouk that she would consider speaking to her independently. No address, no calls to her employer, no informing relatives on her behalf.

‘And that man from the paper?’ Sofie asked.

‘He's checked my documents. He doesn't know where you are. I won't put him in touch with you without your permission.’

‘Not for now.’

‘Then we won't.’

The conversation grew easier once the boundaries were clear. Sofie asked what else Lena had seen in the house. Lena gave no inventory, just said she had recognised the place where she had examined the damage, and had stopped when the claimed vacancy proved wrong. Sofie asked whether a window had been open. Lena could not remember for certain, and said so.

‘I'll have to go back for my things,’ Sofie said. ‘Not on my own.’

‘Talk to Mieke about that. Make sure permission and access are properly arranged. I won't go in for you beforehand.’

Sofie did not thank her for withdrawing that possibility. She only said good. Lena realised how much peace there could be in that word when no one spoke it for someone else.

After they hung up, the pen lay where she had left it. She wanted to write down everything, but first made a brief factual note of the permissions and contact arrangements. Beside it she recorded that Sofie herself had said she had left on 14 May, afraid, and had kept threatening messages. About Henk she wrote only that Sofie did not want to discuss the events by phone. She had heard no account of a fall, an argument or a push.

Mieke answered her call. Lena kept to what she had permission to pass on. She heard the relief at the other end, then the immediate question: could Sofie decide for herself how to take the next step?

‘We've discussed that. She wants to talk to you first.’

‘Then I'll call her. You don't need to arrange it for us.’

Lena sent Anouk the limited update. She saved her own note with the date and time of the call. The conversation had changed more than the two documents side by side that morning. Someone could describe what a form had done to her life, but whom she told was still her choice.

She called Jip, who answered amid the noise of a school corridor and said she would be outside in a minute. Lena waited, heard a heavy door close, then told her the woman had been in touch.

‘Sofie. She's safe where she's staying. I don't know everything, but I do know that.’

Jip did not ask where. She said she was glad, then that her bus was coming. Lena let her go. She was still in her workspace, with the empty slots in her calendar and the unresolved file. She put the phone back on the table. This time she did not need to hold it until it made another sound.