by Helen Grant
And she kept an eye out for Kris whenever she was out. She didn’t really expect to see him; she thought perhaps the family had moved away from the area. If she hadn’t seen him for over ten years, why would she run into him now? But she looked anyway.
Once, she found the local telephone directory and looked up Verstraeten, but that didn’t tell her anything either. There were fifteen local listings for Verstraeten, and she couldn’t remember what Kris’s father’s Christian name was. There was no separate listing for Kris Verstraeten. Feeling rather foolish, she put the directory away.
For two weeks Veerle saw and heard nothing of Kris, but on the fifteenth day after her visit to the castle, she saw him again.
It was a Thursday afternoon, and she was on the bus home from school. The bus was full of other students, chatting, laughing, jostling with each other for space. Veerle knew most of them, but she wasn’t in the mood for chatting; she put her earphones in and gazed out of the window, letting the music wash over her in a soothing tide.
When the bus reached her village she was the last to alight, fighting her way through the packed bodies. She stepped onto the pavement, and then the bus drove off, leaving a cloud of evil-smelling exhaust behind it, and she looked across the road, and there he was.
He was leaning against the high wall that ran around the churchyard. In the black leather jacket and black jeans he stood out starkly against the grey stone with its frosting of snow; he might have been a priest or a demon. It was a shock to see him, here in the street so close to her own house. It was like opening her roller shutters one morning and seeing a tiger walking down the middle of the street, its flame-and-cinder pelt wet with Flemish rain. He didn’t belong here, not any more, not since the boy Kris had metamorphosed into this tall, broad-shouldered young man.
Is he here for me? she thought, and something was churning inside her stomach like a swimmer kicking up through muddy water. Then she thought: Please God, don’t let her see him. In no possible alternative universe could she imagine any happy conjunction of Kris and her mother; they were polar opposites, natural enemies.
She hesitated. Supposing he’s waiting for someone else? How stupid am I going to look then? All the same, she couldn’t stop staring at him.
Now he was looking at her, he had recognized her, and he was pushing away from the wall. Veerle was convinced he was going to come over to her. Her heart was thumping as she crossed the road diagonally, moving further up the street; her path took her away from him but at least she was beyond the line of sight of the house if her mother decided to look out.
Kris was moving towards her, languidly at first, but then a little more quickly as he saw her moving away. ‘Hold on,’ he said.
She was safe now: the solid wall of the house at the corner of the street was between her and anything her mother could see from the doorstep of their home. She turned and looked at him. Kris. It’s so weird, seeing him now when I remember him as a kid of ten or something. He’s changed. He’s so . . . She found the word she was looking for and glanced away, not wanting him to see it in her eyes, the way she reacted to him. It might be nothing to do with her, him being here.
‘Don’t you live on Kerkstraat?’ said Kris.
‘Yes,’ said Veerle succinctly; she didn’t want to tell him she was avoiding Claudine.
‘So are you going for a walk or something?’ His tone was dry.
‘No.’ She dared not elaborate. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked, and then wished she hadn’t. He would probably say he was waiting for someone else.
Kris shrugged. ‘I have something for you.’
For me? She stared at him in spite of herself.
He slid a hand inside his jacket and produced an envelope. ‘Here.’
She took it, and turned it over. The address read Veerle De Keyser, Kerkstraat 6. How did he know that? But it was no mystery, she realized; even if he had forgotten which house she had lived in from the days when they were both children at the same village school, it was easy enough to find the address in the phone book.
‘If you didn’t come I was going to put it in the letter box,’ said Kris.
Veerle shot him a glance. Thank God you didn’t. She imagined Claudine picking up the envelope. She had no idea what was inside it, but she already knew that she didn’t want to share the contents with her mother. She ripped it open.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded twice. She unfolded it and read the words written in a large bold hand.
ENGELENSTRAAT 51
TOMORROW 20.00.
K
That was all it said. No Dear Veerle, or any explanation. She looked at Kris, but there was no need for either of them to say anything. It was a challenge. She could take it, or she could screw up the paper, hand it back to him and walk away.
‘So?’ said Kris. He had his head on one side, and that ironic look on his face.
‘I don’t know,’ said Veerle. She stuffed the letter into her jacket pocket. She waited for him to try to persuade her, but he didn’t. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.
Later, when she was alone, she took the paper out of her pocket and looked at it again.
Engelenstraat, she thought. It didn’t mean anything to her. She knew all the main streets in the village, of course, and it wasn’t any of those, so it was probably one of the little residential streets tucked away somewhere at the edge where the houses abutted fields and roads petered out into tracks that meandered amongst greenhouses and vegetable patches.
It doesn’t matter, she thought. I’m not going anyway. He may be gorgeous but he’s presuming too much.
She put the letter into the kitchen bin, but a minute later she took it out again and tore it into little pieces, imagining Claudine fishing it out, reading it. She stuffed the pieces back into the bin. It made no difference, though; she wouldn’t forget the message.
8
THE FOLLOWING EVENING Veerle told her mother she was taking the bus to Overijse to see a Flemish film in the theatre there. This was a safe way of ensuring her mother didn’t try to come along; her Flemish was virtually non-existent. It didn’t stop Claudine trying to persuade Veerle not to go.
She stood in the hallway of the house with her shoulders hunched and her arms folded across her body, as though she alone could sense some chill bleak wind that others could not feel. Her hair had long since turned grey and she kept it cut very short in a mannish style that didn’t suit her. Unmade-up, she looked worn and faded, like a doll left out in the rain.
‘I won’t go to bed until you get back,’ she told Veerle in a reproachful voice.
Veerle sighed inwardly, but she kept her expression calm. If she showed any sign of impatience Claudine would only become more distressed.
‘Don’t forget I have to turn my phone off during the film,’ she told her mother. ‘So you won’t be able to call me.’
She felt as though she were in charge of an elderly child. Except, she thought, there would be some chance that a child might change, and grow out of it. Claudine was only going to get worse, she suspected. She reminded Veerle of flypaper: once she stuck to you it was almost impossible to free yourself, and the more you struggled, the more she stuck. I hate thinking about her like that. But – but . . . It was true, that was the trouble.
She was afraid that if she prolonged her departure Claudine might work herself up to tears, so she left the house as quickly as she could. She went round the corner towards the bus stop, even though she wanted to go in the other direction entirely, just in case Claudine was watching from the doorstep.
She had a pretty good idea what Kris was proposing, so she had dressed in black jeans and boots, a dark roll-necked jumper and a warm jacket. The snow was melting, but the air still had a savage chill. She hung about near the bus stop until the bus had been and gone, and then she doubled back along a street that ran parallel to Kerkstraat.
Engelenstraat, she had discovered, was only about three hundred metres from her own house.
She had never been down it; even when she cycled about the village she avoided lanes like that because the cobblestones were vicious: old and irregular and ill-maintained. Not many people lived there; there were empty plots between the houses, which were all at least forty years old. The night she had explored the old castle there had been hardly any moonlight, the moon a sliver like a Mona Lisa smile, mostly obscured by clouds. Tonight there was a bright moon, which was just as well because Engelenstraat had no street lighting and all the houses were dark. In most cases the shutters were down on the doors and windows, and in all probability there was light and cosy warmth on the other side, but even before Veerle got to number 51 she could see that it was not the case there. The house was empty.
There was an estate agent’s board outside with TE KOOP printed on it in large letters. This struck Veerle as a hopeless waste of time; this was not the sort of street that had through-traffic, where there was a chance of anyone seeing the board and contacting the agent. She was contemplating the sign from the other side of the road when she saw a dark shape detach itself from the shadows at the side of the house.
She waited until she was sure it was Kris before she went over. It was almost impossible to spend years living in a house with Claudine without paranoid thoughts about your own personal security creeping in, however much you tried to resist. In Claudine’s terms, what she was doing was absolutely suicidal – which was part of the attraction, Veerle supposed.
‘Hi,’ she whispered. She saw Kris smile that lopsided smile, and she knew that there had never been any question about whether she would turn up tonight.
He didn’t say anything, just inclined his head to indicate that she should follow. It was a clear night; Veerle could hear the cars on the main road and a dog barking somewhere. Sound carried outdoors; it was best to keep talking to a minimum.
She followed Kris along the side of the house. She thought it had been built in the 1930s or ’40s; it was a dull, ugly-looking red-brick building with small square windows, the frames painted white and the shutters let down. You could tell by looking at it that it would be dingy inside, even on sunny days. On a grey rainy Flemish morning the rooms would be like cells.
The main door was at the side but Kris went straight past it and turned the corner. The back of the house was bathed in moonlight. It was no more prepossessing than the front: dowdy brick, too-small windows.
‘Here,’ said Kris. He laid his hand on the back door with its peeling white paint, and it opened easily.
‘How did you do that?’ whispered Veerle.
He shrugged. ‘I’ve already been in.’
Veerle scanned the back of the house. There was a lean-to against the wall, and next to it a log-pile that would be easily scaled. About a metre and a half above the roof of the lean-to was a sash window, open just a few centimetres.
She felt exposed here at the back, with the moonlight bleaching the bricks. There were no houses in the neighbouring plots, but the neglected garden backed onto allotments, and on the other side of those there were houses. Anyone who happened to look out of their back window would see her and Kris quite easily. She didn’t waste any time asking herself whether she really wanted to go inside; it was good to be out of sight of curious eyes.
The back door led straight into a large kitchen. The window shutters were down but light streamed in through the glass panels in the door. It didn’t look as though anyone had replaced anything in this kitchen for decades. The work surfaces were made of Formica so aged that it had passed from merely vintage into archaeological. There was a faint and melancholy smell of damp and neglect.
You could almost hear the house sighing in a martyred sort of way, thought Veerle. She thought of Claudine and instantly felt guilty.
Kris clearly knew his way about. He led her across the kitchen and into a narrow hallway, and as soon as the door between the rooms was closed behind them he switched on a torch.
The beam travelled over walls papered with an old-fashioned floral design, a tiled floor in a clashing pattern, and the side of a wooden staircase, painted white. There were light patches on the walls where pictures had once hung. The general effect was overwhelmingly dismal.
Why does he do this? thought Veerle. She felt uneasy in this forlorn and decayed environment; it had all the appeal of drinking coffee in a room with a corpse propped up in the corner. More than that, she was baffled by Kris’s actions. The castle, yes, she understood that; it had a kind of dilapidated grandeur to it. This place was simply ugly and depressing, the sort of place you wanted to break out of rather than into.
There was a door to the left. Veerle watched Kris go to open it. There would be another dark and musty chamber on the other side, she guessed. To her surprise, however, when the door swung open she saw a soft light coming from within. She stepped forward and peered round the doorframe.
The room was much as expected: a bare floor with tiles of an old-fashioned design, dog-eared floral wallpaper, an empty curtain pole with the rings still on it, like bangles on a skeletal arm. There was a large marble fireplace that must have been grand when it was installed, but now looked outmoded and too heavy for the room. On the marble shelf over the fireplace was a candle standing on a saucer, and next to the candle was a bottle of wine and three glasses.
Three? The room was deserted; there were only the two of them.
‘So,’ said Kris, holding out his arms to encompass the room. ‘Welcome.’ He went over to the mantelpiece and picked up the bottle of wine. ‘Drink?’
‘There are three glasses,’ said Veerle bluntly. She didn’t move from her place in the doorway. ‘Why are there three glasses?’
‘Someone else is coming, obviously,’ said Kris, grinning at her. He didn’t seem bothered by her obvious suspicion.
Veerle watched him as he filled two of the glasses.
I thought it was just the two of us. Who else is coming? She began to think that maybe it wasn’t enough that she had known Kris when they were kids, that she didn’t really know him, this grown-up Kris with his insouciant manner and ironic smile. She glanced back into the darkened hallway, wondering whether she should just try to leave right now.
‘Hey, it’s just Els,’ said Kris, coming over with the glasses. ‘Only don’t call her that. Hommel, that’s what she likes to be called. Don’t call her Els and you’ll be OK.’
He handed Veerle a glass of wine. She took it from him but she didn’t try it.
‘I thought it was just us,’ she said. She was conscious of the darkened hallway behind her; she kept listening for the sound of someone else coming into the house. Els, or Hommel, whatever her name was, and if that was really who was coming. She stepped into the room; she felt better with the floral wall at her back. ‘What are we doing here, anyway? Mending window catches again?’
Kris shook his head. ‘Admin.’
‘Admin?’
‘If you want to do this, someone else has to agree. Not just me. Two of us.’
‘Do what? Break into dusty old houses where nobody lives anyway?’
Kris shook his head. ‘Of course not. What would be the point? This place will probably be pulled down as soon as it’s sold, anyway. Look at it – it’s practically falling down on its own. The castle, that’s different – it’s worth working on it, and anyway, I wasn’t there for that. I was looking for Vlinder.’
Vlinder again.
‘Who’s Vlinder?’
He shrugged. ‘A friend of a friend of a friend.’
‘And Hommel?’
‘Hommel’s a friend.’ He didn’t seem inclined to pursue it. ‘She’s coming at nine. We have about fifty minutes to discuss the proposal, and if you don’t like it you can leave before Hommel gets here, OK?’
Veerle stared at him for a moment. Then she took a first sip of the wine, watching him over the rim of the glass. His bold dark eyes, his sharp features and unruly hair. The way he leaned against the wall, long-limbed and casual. The taste of the wine filled her mouth
gloriously, all blackberries and spices.
‘OK,’ she said.
‘It’s not about dumps like this,’ said Kris, glancing around. ‘It’s not about the castle, either, though some people like to do those. Vlinder, for example. She mostly did the old places.’
Did? Past tense?
‘So why did we come here then?’ asked Veerle.
‘To see if you would.’ Kris took a mouthful of wine. He didn’t sip it the way she did; he took a swallow. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘haven’t you ever thought about all the houses there are around here, standing empty? Not just the ones waiting for the demolition ball, like this one. The other ones. The ones rented by bigwigs from the Commission, wealthy businessmen. They come for a few years, then they go, and the place is empty for a couple of months. Or they go home to wherever it is they come from for a month in the summer, and leave the place empty. Christmas is the same. The airport is full and the houses are empty. Some of them, you have to see them to believe it. Six bedrooms, four bathrooms, marble everywhere. Some of them have pools. And what they save on rent, because they’re not paying it themselves, they spend on all this other stuff. Plasma-screen TVs, state-of-the-art sound systems. All of it sitting there in an empty house.’
‘You’re saying you break into those houses?’ said Veerle. ‘To do what? You steal stuff?’
‘No.’ Kris shook his head. ‘Anyone who does that is out. We . . . enjoy the houses. Watch TV, listen to music, sit in the jacuzzi. Whatever. But there are rules. You clear up after yourself, and you do something for the house.’
‘Mend the window catch?’ asked Veerle mischievously.
‘Maybe. Whatever needs doing.’
‘What did you do in the last one you went into?’ she asked him. She took another sip of the wine.