Shadow Sister

by Simone Vlugt

  It’s two days since my adventure with Bilal, five o’clock in the afternoon and I’m sitting around a table in a brasserie with Thomas and Sylvie. Like me, Thomas chooses his own work hours and Sylvie has left the salon an hour early to listen to my story.

  They are sitting rather pointedly apart and acting normal; I sense that they’ve agreed on this approach. I appreciate it. I don’t know if I could bear them sitting next to me like a pair of turtle doves.

  They both look at me with a combination of fascination and horror.

  ‘I still can’t believe that you went to look for him.’ Sylvie shakes her head. ‘I did warn you, Elisa.’

  ‘And why didn’t you tell me what you had planned?’ Thomas asks as he lights up a cigarette. ‘You only asked me if I’d go with you, you didn’t say why you wanted to go there.’

  ‘Because you’d have tried to stop me,’ I tell him.

  ‘You’re right about that,’ Thomas says. ‘And I’d have even made sure you didn’t leave your house.’

  ‘You’d probably have just gone with her,’ Sylvie says and we all laugh. But then there’s another silence.

  I rotate a beer mat in my hand. ‘And yet I find it strange that Bilal didn’t hurt me. Everything suggests that he’s the murderer, but I can’t figure out why he let me go.’

  ‘Why not?’ Thomas says. ‘You’re no threat to him, he just wanted to scare you off.’

  ‘He would never have got away with it if he’d shot you,’ Sylvie adds. ‘You asked so many people about him.’

  I stare ahead. Yes, that’s probably the reason that I’m still alive. To Bilal I was just an irritating fly buzzing around his head, and he wanted to swat me off.

  ‘He must have done it though,’ I muse. ‘I mean, who else would have wanted to kill Lydia?’

  We look at each other.

  ‘She was good at getting people’s backs up, but whether that’s a reason to murder someone…’ Thomas replies.

  ‘I wasn’t that fond of her either, but again that’s a stretch.’ Sylvie is apologetic, but I nod that I know what she means about Lydia.

  ‘But you can’t dismiss it,’ Thomas says. ‘What we might consider a weak motive might be reason enough for someone to commit murder. There are enough nutters around.’

  ‘Her colleagues?’ Sylvie suggests. ‘There was a lot going on at that school.’

  ‘I thought about that too, and so did the police,’ I say. ‘They questioned everyone but nothing came to light.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean they didn’t have motives,’ Thomas counters, ‘just that the police couldn’t find them. You’d be better off talking to her colleagues than hanging about in nightclubs and getting into cars with strange men in the middle of the night, Elisa.’

  We laugh again and look around to see where our drinks have got to.

  ‘I’ll go to Rotterdam College,’ I say. ‘Or no, I’ll go to Jasmine’s house. It would be better to see her when she’s got time to talk.’

  Thomas goes to the bar to see where our drinks are and Sylvie’s eyes track his every movement. ‘Hello!’ I tease.

  She looks at me and lets out a guilty laugh. ‘He’s really nice, isn’t he?’

  I glance at Thomas at the bar, his broad shoulders, longish dark hair. ‘Yes.’

  Thomas returns with the drinks. ‘Here we are, juice for the ladies and a beer for sir.’

  He sets the drinks down in front of us with a flamboyant gesture.

  My mobile rings.

  ‘Elisa speaking.’

  It’s a fairly desperate Raoul on the line. He’s horribly busy at work and the after-school club isn’t going to stay open late enough for all the overtime he needs to put in. Could I help?

  ‘Of course,’ I say, glancing at my watch. ‘What were you going to eat? Do you have anything in?’

  ‘Sandwiches?’

  ‘I thought as much. I’ll go do some shopping with Val, and then I’ll cook. See you whenever you get in.’ I cut off his heartfelt thanks by hanging up.

  ‘Help brigade on call again?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘He doesn’t ask for that much help,’ I put him straight. ‘Raoul has got everything perfectly sorted.’

  ‘I keep seeing someone else in his house more and more often when I cycle past,’ Thomas says.

  ‘What are you doing cycling past there so often?’

  Thomas sips his beer and avoids my eyes. And I understand. Even though he’s got something with Sylvie now, he’s still not completely over me. Although I’ve never told him, there’s no doubt that Thomas knows I’ve got a ‘weakness’ for Raoul, to put it lightly. Is he worried that I’ll get into a relationship with Raoul now that the coast is clear? Is that the reason he’s finally succumbed to Sylvie’s advances?

  As I cycle to Valerie’s school, I reflect on this further and when I get to the playground I’m smiling. It’s a smile I immediately feel guilty about – why shouldn’t I let Sylvie have Thomas if I don’t want to go out with him myself?

  Valerie launches herself into my arms. ‘Elisa!’

  She holds me tightly, pressing her face so hard against me that I’m touched, and then concerned. Maybe I haven’t been paying her enough attention recently.

  ‘Where’s Daddy? Are you staying for dinner?’ Valerie asks both questions in a single breath.

  ‘Daddy will be a bit late today. And yes, I’m staying for dinner. We’ll go and do the shopping together.’

  ‘Yes!’ Valerie shouts. She says goodbye to the leader and skips out of school. ‘We’re not having brocklies are we?’

  ‘No, we’re not having broccoli.’ I unlock my bike and put Val on the back.

  ‘What then?’ she asks.

  ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Chips!’ Valerie shouts.

  ‘We could also make a nice casserole.’

  ‘Can I help?’ she asks.

  I nod and Valerie wraps her arms around my waist.

  ‘Just like with Mummy,’ she says. ‘Mummy always let me help too.’

  43.

  The kitchen fills with the smell of fresh herbs: rosemary, basil and thyme. I love herbs and always use them generously. As the dish bubbles away in the oven, I lay the table and set a candelabra down in the middle.

  ‘Can I light it?’ Valerie asks.

  ‘Soon,’ I promise. ‘When Daddy’s home.’

  ‘Mummy and Daddy had candles as well,’ Valerie comments, giving me second thoughts about the candelabra. As I hesitate over whether to take it away or not, the doorbell rings. Valerie runs to the bay window and looks out.

  ‘It’s Jennifer’s mummy!’ She rushes to open the door.

  Jasmine is standing on the doorstep holding a large pan, a house key dangling from her fingers. We look at each other in surprise.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘You’re here? I didn’t know that.’

  I contemplate the pan in her hands and Jasmine notices me looking. ‘I sometimes bring Raoul something to eat. I know this is a busy week for him.’

  ‘Oh, that’s very kind, but it’s really not necessary. I’ve cooked.’

  ‘It smells delicious,’ Jasmine gushes. ‘Shall I just put this in the fridge then? Then he can have it tomorrow.’

  I step aside and Jasmine comes in, carrying the pan like a carer from Meals on Wheels. A carer who feels remarkably at home here. She moves things around in the fridge to make space for the pan, then her gaze rests on the table. ‘That looks cosy.’

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it?’ I reply neutrally. ‘Raoul called to see if I could help. He has to work late.’

  ‘He is busy,’Jasmine says. ‘I’m amazed by how he can combine his job with looking after Valerie. That’s why I sometimes bring round food, or we eat together.’

  I remember Thomas saying he’d seen someone in the house. ‘Together?’

  ‘Jennifer hardly eats a thing so I always cook too much,’ Jasmine explains. ‘And I don’t know about you, but I always hat
e cooking for just myself.’

  ‘But aren’t you married?’

  ‘My husband is a pilot so he’s not home much. Very unsociable.’

  ‘Aha,’ is all I say.

  ‘So…’ Jasmine puts her hands together and looks around smiling. ‘Everything’s under control here. I’ll get going.’

  ‘Would you like a drink? My dish needs at least forty-five more minutes in the oven. I was about to have a glass of wine.’

  ‘Oh…’ Jasmine hesitates. ‘I’m not sure…Well, why not. I’ll just get Jennifer though – she’s on her own in the house.’

  ‘Would you like red or white?’

  ‘Red,’ Jasmine says and leaves.

  I get two wine glasses out, fill one with red and the other with white and put them on the coffee table. Through the bay window I see Jasmine returning with Jennifer. Once they’ve come in, the girls go off to play and Jasmine and I sit down opposite each other a little awkwardly.

  I don’t know Jasmine that well, though she was a good friend of Lydia’s. She seems quite nice. She’s also pretty, with curly red hair and warm brown eyes, but she looks pale and I notice the rings under her eyes. ‘You look pretty,’ I blurt out.

  Jasmine has just picked up her glass and looks surprised. ‘Everything’s such chaos inside my head,’ she says. ‘I’m really looking forward to the summer holidays. I can hardly keep it together at school.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask.

  ‘The atmosphere has changed so much, I really miss Lydia. Everything is different. Student numbers are dropping all the time, at least five colleagues have been told that their contracts won’t be renewed and it’s just downright unpleasant there.’

  ‘How terrible.’

  ‘It had been on the cards for a while, but after Lydia’s death the number of new students signing up plummeted. Hardly surprising. I wouldn’t want to send my child to a school where the teachers are threatened with weapons.’

  ‘Who exactly has been fired?’

  ‘I’m not sure which of us you know, but perhaps you know Luke Rombouts.’

  I’m shocked. ‘Luke! Why?’

  Jasmine shrugs. ‘The excuse was that they wanted someone with more teaching experience, but that doesn’t make sense. Luke is an excellent teacher. Personally I think he was fired because it got out that he was gay. He’d already been bumped out of two other schools, and he’d decided to keep quiet about it, until he had a permanent contract. He confided in Lydia. He’d have been better off not telling her because she told me, and I’m afraid she might have told other people too. In deepest confidence, of course, but if you want to be really sure a secret won’t get out, you just have to keep your mouth shut. And Lydia wasn’t so good at that.’

  I listen with mixed feelings. On one hand I’m annoyed that Jasmine is talking about my sister in this way, on the other I sense that this was exactly what happened. I remember a group of us going out to eat at Oliva one evening and Lydia mentioning Luke’s secret. I’m sure he didn’t appreciate that.

  ‘She didn’t do it deliberately,’ I say, feeling the need to defend my sister. ‘She was just a terrible gossip.’

  ‘I know that,’ Jasmine murmurs. ‘And I miss her so much. It’s so strange not seeing her at school anymore. I can’t get used to it.’

  She’s got tears in her eyes and I feel my own brimming up. I wonder if I should tell her about my adventure with Bilal, but decide not to. Instead I ask, ‘The police can’t get much on Bilal Assrouti. Do you think he’s innocent?’

  ‘Everything seems to point towards him but I just can’t imagine that he really did it.’ Jasmine sips her wine. ‘I don’t mean that he was an angel – I had problems with Bilal too – but I’ve never felt threatened by him. It was all bravado, you know, it doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘But Bilal pulled a knife,’ I remind her. ‘And it wasn’t long after that that Lydia was shot.’

  Jasmine sighs. ‘I know, that’s quite a coincidence. But that doesn’t mean he shot her. He was mouthy but so are a lot of them. You know, it’s so easy to point the finger at a boy like that. A teacher at a school with a lot of Muslim students is shot. Conclusion – a Muslim student did it. But what if she’d been a teacher at St Lawrence’s College? Would the media be so quick to condemn a difficult white student?’

  We sit there for a while drinking our wine.

  ‘Jasmine, I want to ask you something,’ I say. ‘It’s a bit of a strange subject, but did Lydia ever discuss her marriage with you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Every marriage has its problems,’ I reply. ‘I wonder if she’d have confided in you if she’d had problems with Raoul. I mean you were close friends, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So she did confide in you?’

  ‘She’d sometimes tell me about the arguments she had with Raoul, and I told her the things that bothered me about my husband. But what are you getting at? I presume she also talked about that kind of thing with you.’

  I ignore that last comment. ‘How serious do you think their arguments were? What were they about?’

  ‘I’m not sure exactly,’ Jasmine reflects. ‘Just the usual, that Raoul would rather she stopped working. He can be a bit old-fashioned, don’t you think?’

  ‘Do you think Raoul was seeing anyone else?’

  Jasmine peers into her glass for a long time before answering. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘I saw him in the Euromast restaurant just before Lydia’s death and he was with another woman. I told Lydia about it, not that she did much about it. Raoul was on a pretty long leash with her. She really loved him, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say in a choked voice. ‘I know that.’

  ‘Are you all right? You look so pale.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache.’

  ‘Then I’ll get going. We’ve still got to eat.’ Jasmine stands up and calls her daughter.

  I watch them crossing the street. Jasmine saw Raoul with another woman. That means that Lydia and I weren’t the only women in his life. I recall Jasmine’s expression when she came across me here unexpectedly, the house key she was holding and I wonder how much to trust her story.

  44.

  ‘Jasmine has just been round,’ I mention as we’re eating.

  ‘And I played with Jennifer,’ Valerie adds.

  ‘Oh?’ Raoul says with little interest.

  ‘She brought a pan of food with her.’

  ‘She does that quite often.’ Raoul’s voice doesn’t sound as grateful or tender as I’d expected, giving me a sudden and shameful vision of myself as a jealous, suspicious wife. Look at me here, at my sister’s dining table, in her house, with her husband. There’s no doubt Lydia sat here with exactly the same feelings and had exactly the same kind of conversation with Raoul. Thank god I put the candelabra away at the last minute.

  My appetite has disappeared and I push my plate away.

  ‘Finished already?’ Raoul, who is clearly enjoying his food, looks up in surprise.

  ‘It’s a little rich,’ I say.

  He nods, but that doesn’t stop him from taking another serving. ‘It’s delicious,’ he says with such a sweet smile that I forget Jasmine and her pan of food in an instant. ‘You’re a good cook, just as good as Lydia.’

  Go on Raoul, put Lydia back in between us again, help me remember the terrible reason I’m sitting here in her chair, remind me that she’ll always be joining us.

  I don’t wait for Raoul to take a third portion. ‘I have to go, I’ve still got a tonne of things to do this evening.’

  He doesn’t protest. No disappointed ‘must you go?’ or ‘stay a little bit longer’. But his eyes do follow me as I get my bag from the window seat, put on my jacket and button it up.

  ‘Bye-bye, Valerie darling. Do I get a kiss?’

  Valerie jumps up from her chair, runs to me and gives me a cuddle. ‘Will you come again soon?’

  I promise I will and give Raoul a cheerful w
ave.

  ‘I’ll see you out.’ Raoul follows me into the hall. ‘You finish your dinner,’ he says to Valerie, and closes the door behind me. Then he turns to me and looks at me with that special, half smile I’ve always found so sexy. Again I feel my belly churning.

  He looks me in the eyes and whispers, ‘Thank you.’

  Nothing more. We’re so close in the enclosed hall. For a second I think he’s going to kiss me, but he turns around and goes back to Valerie without saying another word.

  Am I disappointed? Would I really have let him kiss me, here in Lydia’s house? What am I expecting from Raoul? I don’t even know what I expect from myself.

  As I cycle home, my thoughts take another direction. I think back to my conversation with Jasmine and what she said about Luke and Lydia.

  I should have a chat with Luke. But how should I approach this? I barely know him. I can’t ask him right out if he thinks Lydia was responsible for him losing his job, and how angry he was about it.

  He was still working at the school when she was killed, so it can’t have been him. But did he sense he was about to be sacked? Did he already know about it? Did Lydia just give him that last push towards the dole?

  I decide not to approach Luke, but to run this information by Noorda. After my adventures with Bilal, I don’t feel like playing detective anymore.

  At home, there’s a message on my answering machine. It’s someone from a women’s magazine I regularly take portrait photos for. I haven’t had many commissions from them recently – if you turn anyone down a couple of times in a row, they look for someone else to use. But it seems the magazine hasn’t forgotten me because another photographer is ill and now they want me to photograph a well-known writer. Can I call back on the editor’s mobile?

  I stare at my answering machine undecided. I haven’t done anything for ages. But the thought of work gives me a buzz somewhere deep down. For the first time.

  Photography has always been my great love and the realisation that I feel the same way about it despite everything else changing in my life sends a wave of relief through me.

  I’ll go back to work. I’ll accept that job and take some good photos of the writer. I’ll open my studio again and force my way back into the world of photography. Maybe I’ll even travel, do a reportage piece. Edinburgh Festival is coming up. Last year I went to a festival in Lucerne and took pictures which I sold afterwards to a travel magazine.