by Helen Grant
That didn’t feel right though; Hommel was old enough to move out without anyone’s permission. If her stepfather was that much of a bastard, she might not want him to know where she had gone, but . . .
Surely she’d have let her mother know she was OK. Or her friends. Veerle’s brow knitted. And her ex-boyfriend?
It was no use; she wasn’t getting any work done. She looked at her watch and saw that she only had twenty minutes to wait before the salon closed. It had looked pretty dead, anyway; no point in leaving it until five sharp, in case they closed a few minutes early. She packed her books back into her bag and stood up.
When she reached the street where the salon was, it was five to five. She was hurrying along, her eyes fixed on the dreary-looking awning, when she nearly cannoned into someone coming the other way. She looked into the person’s face and realized that it was Hommel’s mother.
‘Mevrouw Coppens,’ she said.
The woman gave her that look again, like a frightened rabbit, and then she glanced over her shoulder, instinctively looking back towards the salon as though she thought its domineering owner might see them speaking to each other and object.
‘Sorry,’ she said, and made as if to step off the pavement and into the road so that she could pass.
‘Can I talk to you?’ asked Veerle. She subtly shifted her stance to block the woman’s escape, but dared not be too overt for fear of scaring her off altogether.
‘What about?’
‘Els.’
‘You said you hadn’t seen her,’ said Mevrouw Coppens. She was looking past Veerle at the street ahead, as though dying to make her escape, as though she had sighted a route and was waiting for an opportunity to bolt.
‘I know. But I’d like to get in touch with her.’
‘Why?’
Well, because her ex-boyfriend asked me to. Because she’s got the key to a house that doesn’t belong to her, and someone wants it back. Because maybe – just maybe – something bad has happened to her.
‘I’m . . . worried about her. I haven’t seen her for a while and she’s not answering calls.’
‘She’s left,’ said Mevrouw Coppens. She was shifting her weight uneasily from foot to foot. ‘I have to catch a bus,’ she said.
‘I can walk with you,’ said Veerle, and again she saw that look of nervous dismay. As Mevrouw Coppens began to walk she kept pace with her. ‘Look, when did you last see Els?’ she tried.
‘Before I went away,’ said the older woman. She seemed impatient now to get the words out, to shake Veerle off. ‘I had to go and see my sister for a couple of days, and when I got back, Els had gone. Jappe said she went out one night without saying where she was going, and she didn’t come back.’
Jappe. The stepfather.
‘Have you contacted the police?’
‘Jappe said it wasn’t necessary.’
‘But . . . has she phoned or anything since then?’
‘Jappe said she was angry . . . in a sulk. She’ll come back when she’s calmed down. She can be . . . difficult. They fight a lot.’
Jappe sounds like a klootzak, thought Veerle. ‘When did you go to see your sister?’
‘I suppose it was last month. She has a lot of ill health, she—’
Veerle didn’t want to get sidetracked by Mevrouw Coppens’s sister’s health. ‘Last month? And you haven’t heard anything?’
‘No,’ said the other woman. She had stopped walking, but she was looking away from Veerle again, gazing ahead with longing at the bus stop, desperate to escape.
‘Look, it’s not up to me, but I think you should call the police,’ said Veerle.
Mevrouw Coppens was shaking her head.
‘Why not?’ persisted Veerle. It was frustrating talking to this woman. She’s so vague and passive, it’s like trying to grasp smoke.
‘She’s over eighteen. She’s old enough to move out, have her own place. Jappe says—’
‘Screw what Jappe says.’ Veerle was beginning to lose her temper. She reached out and tried to grasp Hommel’s mother by her upper arm, to stop her moving away. ‘She’s your daughter.’
‘Let go of me.’
To her astonishment Veerle felt a blow on her hip and realized that Mevrouw Coppens had taken a swing at her with her handbag. She released her grip and stared at the woman.
Mevrouw Coppens’s faded features were finally suffused with colour. She was trembling with nervous indignation.
‘You’re just as bad,’ she blurted out. ‘Arguing, causing trouble, never taking no for an answer. You’re just as bad as she is.’
She began to walk away from Veerle, walking as fast as she could go without actually breaking into a run.
Veerle bit her lip, and then set off after her. She had to jog to keep up. One last try, she told herself, although she was pretty sure it was useless.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘your daughter’s been gone for weeks and you don’t know where and you haven’t heard anything. I don’t want to upset you but I think you should call the police.’
It was like talking to a stone. She couldn’t believe that the wan, indefinite-looking face could conceal such stubbornness; she suspected that it had not flowered from within but been caught like an infection from the objectionable Jappe. Mevrouw Coppens was afraid not to believe him when he said Hommel had simply gone off in a sulk.
‘Please,’ she tried.
‘Go away.’
Veerle stood still then, and watched Hommel’s mother scurry away up the street with her head down.
Hommel, she thought, and in that moment she felt more sympathy for the other girl than she ever had, as though her thoughts could somehow stretch out like questing fingers and find her, wherever she was. Hommel – whatever has become of you?
She sighed deeply, and then she reached into her pocket for her mobile to call Kris.
38
THAT VERDOMDE RABBIT was back on the bed again.
Veerle was moving around the bedroom like a whirlwind, lifting cushions and discarded T-shirts and magazines, opening drawers and then only half closing them, sweeping papers onto the carpet as she brushed her hands over the flat surfaces, searching for her wallet.
She glanced at the clock above the door and thought, Lieve God – the bus is going to leave in four minutes and at this rate I’m not going to be on it. In spite of the fact that time was running out she still grabbed the rabbit. This time she stuffed it head down in the bin by her desk. She had no doubt that Claudine would fish it out again but she was beyond caring. It gave her a kind of savage pleasure to see those floppy stitched legs protruding from the bin.
Where is it?
She was almost one hundred per cent sure that she had left the wallet on her desk when she went to take a shower, but it wasn’t there now and she had exhausted all the possibilities. She’d opened cupboards and drawers that she hadn’t touched for a week. She’d even got down on her stomach on the floor and peered under the furniture, but the wallet wasn’t anywhere to be found.
She still had her phone, she could call Kris, no problem with that. She never let it out of her sight these days, not since the time Claudine had locked her in her room.
Claudine.
A horrible certainty filled Veerle’s brain. She ran out of the room, leaving the door wide open, and thundered down the stairs.
Claudine was in the kitchen, clearing up the remains of supper. She had her back to Veerle, and she didn’t turn round.
‘Maman? Have you got my wallet?’
Claudine still didn’t turn round, and she didn’t give Veerle a yes or no. ‘Why would I have your wallet?’ she said. Her hands were busy with a plate, polishing it with a tea towel until it shone, but Veerle saw the colour rise in the back of her neck.
She took it, she thought, and the wave of anger that swept through her was dizzying.
‘I don’t know why,’ she snapped. ‘Did you go in my bedroom when I was in the shower?’
Finally Claudine
did turn, although she held the plate in front of her body in both hands, as though holding up a shield.
‘So I’m not allowed in my own daughter’s room now, is that it?’
Veerle bit her lip to stop herself actually screaming.
‘Have you got my wallet?’
Claudine put down the plate and the cloth and stretched out her hands. ‘Do I look like I have your wallet?’ Her voice had a slight tremor in it, but there was a faint air of suppressed triumph about her.
Veerle ground her teeth. ‘Did you take it?’
Claudine looked at her for a long moment, and then she turned and picked up the cloth again. She said, ‘You don’t need your wallet. You should be staying in.’
Now Veerle did let out a little shriek of frustration. ‘I need that wallet. How do you think I’m going to get to school tomorrow without my bus pass and my money?’
‘I’m sure it will turn up in the morning,’ said Claudine.
‘I’m going to find it,’ Veerle told her in a tight voice. She spun on her heel, scanning the kitchen surfaces, but she didn’t really think for a minute that it would be as easy as that, that Claudine would have left the wallet lying out in plain view. She ran to the nearest unit and began opening drawers, rummaging through them with her fingers, slamming them shut so that the contents jumped and rattled. She opened cupboards and finally she even looked in the refrigerator, swinging open the ice box.
All the time Claudine kept working, drying dishes and wiping down the work surfaces. There was a self-conscious air of calm about her that made Veerle want to grab her by the skinny shoulders and shake her. You’ll never find it, said that smug air of composure. I’m sure of that.
Veerle ran into the hallway and pulled out the drawer of the little telephone table with such savage force that it came right out and overturned on the floor, spilling pencils and old till receipts. No wallet. She went into the sitting room and began pulling the cushions off the sofa and running her hands into all the narrow spaces in the upholstery, but she came up with nothing apart from a fifty cent piece. She was breathing heavily now, her chest heaving, and her hair was hanging in her eyes. She had to fight the desire to scream with anger.
She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and saw that it was far too late now, the bus would have gone, bearing with it an empty space that should have been filled by herself, speeding towards Kris, who at this moment was assuredly waiting for her at the bus stop in the town.
Ring him.
She touched the phone in her pocket as though it were a talisman, and then she strode out of the room and ran up the stairs. The crash as she slammed shut her bedroom door made the windowframes rattle. She dragged her phone out of her pocket, but before she did that she gave the bin with the rabbit in it a massive kick that sent it skidding and rolling into the corner of the room.
Kris’s mobile only rang twice before he answered it.
‘Veerle? Where are you?’
‘At home.’ Veerle found that she was so breathless with fury that she could hardly speak. She swallowed, brushing the hair out of her eyes with a shaking hand. ‘She didn’t lock me in this time, she hid my verdomde wallet.’
‘Do you have any money on you? Could you get the next bus?’
‘No. Nothing. It was all in my wallet.’
Kris thought for a moment. ‘I’ll come to you on the next bus back.’
What?!
Veerle gasped. ‘Kris – you can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘You can’t come here. She’ll go mad.’
‘Let her.’
‘Kris—’ But Veerle was speaking to thin air. She looked down at the phone in her hand with disbelief. Then she went and sat on the bed, still staring at the little screen as though it could tell her something, but she stood up again almost as quickly, her stomach prickling with apprehension.
He’s really going to come over here.
He can’t.
He’s going to.
She could have called him back, but what was there to say? She had no idea where the wallet was, so unless she walked four kilometres she couldn’t get into the town herself. She wondered when the bus would arrive. The trip only took about ten minutes but the buses went every half-hour or so. If he had just missed one, it could be a long wait.
She looked down at the silent phone in her hand again.
He can’t really be doing this.
But he was. Exactly seventeen minutes later she heard the doorbell ring.
Veerle didn’t bother to look out of the window. The one thought in her head was to get to the front door before Claudine did, to somehow avert the coming scene. She rushed out of her room and down the stairs, but before she had time to run the length of the narrow hallway she saw that her mother had beaten her to it.
Claudine was sliding back the bolt – naturally, she had locked the door, even though it was nowhere near dark yet – and then she was opening the door, and there was Kris.
Kris looked into the hallway, past Claudine, saw Veerle and smiled.
Claudine, however, standing behind the door, saw a stranger in a black leather jacket and jeans, a tall young man with sharp features and bold dark eyes, his shoulders filling the doorframe. She panicked and tried to shut the door.
Kris stopped her easily, bracing his arm against it. ‘Mevrouw?’ he said mildly. ‘Can I come in? I’m a friend of Veerle’s.’
‘Non,’ said Claudine in a shrill indignant voice, but it was too late. Kris had eased himself inside and closed the door behind him. He held out a hand to her. ‘Kris Verstraeten.’
Claudine looked at the hand as though it were infected with some frightful disease. ‘Non,’ she said again. She glanced back at Veerle and then again at Kris, looking from one to the other as though she couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘Go away,’ she said in French, and it was not quite clear whom she was addressing.
Veerle saw that her mother was actually trembling. ‘She doesn’t understand,’ she said to Kris in Flemish. She approached Claudine and laid a hand gently on her arm. ‘Maman?’ She spoke to her mother reassuringly in French. ‘It’s OK. I know him.’
‘What is he doing here?’ demanded Claudine. Her tone was belligerent but her eyes were wide and fearful. Her gaze kept sliding back to Kris as though she dared not take her eyes off him for an instant for fear of what he might try.
‘He’s my friend,’ said Veerle. She sighed. ‘He came here because I couldn’t go and meet him like we had arranged . . . because you hid my wallet.’
‘It was time we met anyway,’ said Kris in French. Veerle shot him a glance. She had never heard him speak French before; there had never been the need. He spoke well but with a slight accent, and in a calm, amiable voice that she suspected was intended to get under her mother’s guard. It crossed her mind that it was just as well Claudine hadn’t seen the pair of them clinging to the outside of Tante Bernadette’s apartment building in the freezing dark.
‘Why?’ asked Claudine querulously. She held her arms close to her body, hands clasped together, knuckles white, as though she were afraid that if she unclasped them Kris might try to shake hands again.
‘Because I understand you’re not happy about your daughter being with someone you don’t know. So here I am.’
Veerle listened to this with her mouth open. The whole situation was beginning to take on a distinctly surreal tinge. Partly it was the way that Kris managed to make himself sound so stupendously reasonable, not to mention respectable, presenting himself like a suitor asking his intended’s parents for permission to address her. Mostly, though, it was the fact that he had gone for a strategy she would never have tried herself in a million years: the direct assault.
She wondered whether it could possibly work. Her own instinct was to keep from Claudine anything that might provoke another maelstrom of anxiety, and besides, she hated the feeling that her mother was obsessively cataloguing every detail of her life, just as she would have hated it if Claudin
e had spent her days in Veerle’s room, fondling every one of her possessions with her bony fingers.
But where has trying to keep things hidden got me? she thought. Locked up once, and now minus my De Lijn pass, my ID card and all my money.
They were still standing in the narrow hallway, as close and static as a bunch of statues in an auctioneer’s storeroom. Kris was waiting for Claudine’s reply, which from any reasonable person would have consisted of an invitation to come into the living room and sit down. For one startling moment Veerle really thought that this was what her mother was about to do. Claudine moved swiftly between her and Kris and opened the living-room door. For a second there was a glimpse of sofa and armchairs, coffee table and television, and then Claudine was through the door and had closed it in their faces.
Kris and Veerle looked at each other. What now? he telegraphed at her, but before she had time to respond, the door had opened again, and Claudine came marching out. She ignored Kris entirely. She went up to Veerle but she didn’t look her in the eye; she stared over her shoulder.
‘Take it,’ she said, pushing something at Veerle so roughly that Veerle was forced to take a step back. It was her wallet. She was still looking down at it in her hands when her mother hissed something at her, pushed past her and vanished into the kitchen. The door shut with a resounding bang.
Veerle looked at the closed door. Then she went up to Kris, took his arm and pulled him towards the front door.
‘Let’s go,’ she said grimly. ‘Before she changes her mind.’
Out on the pavement, she took a huge breath of spring air, as though she wanted to clear her nostrils of an evil smell. Then she looked at Kris. ‘Can we still go to that house?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then let’s.’
They walked to the bus stop. There was a bus due in ten minutes. Veerle sat on one of the chilly plastic seats; Kris leaned against a poster for Carrefour.
‘So, what did your mother just say to you?’ asked Kris, crossing his arms comfortably.
Veerle looked up at him. ‘T’es vraiment une garce, fille ingrate! She said I was an ungrateful cow.’