Shadow Sister

9.

At half past three, I’m standing in the playground at Valerie’s school, waiting for the bell to go and for her to come running out. I usually chat with the other mothers and the odd father, but today I keep to myself.

There it is, the shrill noise of the bell and the first children come streaming out. Valerie is often the last one, I don’t know why. She comes sauntering out at her own cheerful pace when all her classmates are already on the back of their parent’s bike, or strapped into the back seat of their car. I couldn’t find my beaker, I lost my scarf, I had to go to the toilet, I wanted to tell the teacher something.

It’s not something that bothers me today, but if I’m waiting in the rain it’s a different matter. And there’s rarely a parking space near enough to wait in the car.

She comes ambling out at twenty to four today too, drawings in her hand and her beaker stuffed into her coat pocket.

‘Hi Mummy!’ she says, standing on tiptoe to greet me.

I bend down to kiss her warm, red schoolgirl’s cheek. ‘Hi darling, have you had a nice day?’

‘No, what are we going to eat tonight?’ she says in a single breath as we walk to the car.

‘I’m not sure yet. There’s lots of things in the fridge, we’ll look when we get home.’

‘I want chips.’

‘Maybe we’ll have chips then.’ I open the back door so that Valerie can climb in. She fastens the seatbelt herself and says, ‘I’ve made some nice pictures, Mummy. Do you want to see them?’

She passes me a couple of scribbled drawings that I admire at length.

‘They’re for Grandma.’ Valerie checks my expression. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Well, maybe a very tiny bit,’ I admit. I once said that I really didn’t mind and had to spend the next hour making up for my lack of interest.

‘I’ll do another one for you at home. A really pretty one.’

I slide behind the wheel. ‘What did you do at school today, sweetheart?’

‘Played in the standpit,’ Valerie says, without taking her eyes off her artworks.

I can’t help laughing at her corruption of sandpit, but her second remark wipes the smile from my face. ‘And I bit Christian.’

‘What?’ I look at Valerie in the rear-view mirror. ‘What did you do that for?’

‘He wanted to play cops and robbers,’ Valerie says. ‘But I didn’t want to. I always had to be the robber and he kept poking me with his sword, like that’ – she makes a stabbing gesture and pulls the kind of face that over-enthusiastic boys make when playing – ‘and then he wanted to tie me up and then I bit him.’ Valerie folds her arms.

‘You can always go to the teacher,’ I suggest as I turn out of the street.

‘You know what I don’t understand, Mum?’

‘What?’

‘I’ve been going to school for ages and I still can’t write.’

‘You’re only in your second year,’ I say. ‘Nobody learns to read and write until the third.’

‘That’s too long!’

‘It’s soon enough,’ I say. ‘Cutting and gluing things is nice too, isn’t it?’

‘But I’ve been able to do that for ages! I could do that in creche!’

I study my daughter’s defeated face in the mirror. She’s quick for her age, always trying to do things she’s a little too young for. I recognise that – it’s exactly what I used to be like.

‘Shall I teach you to write a few letters?’

‘You can’t do that,’ Valerie giggles. ‘You’re not a teacher!’

‘Yes, I am. For big children.’

‘Oh yeah,’ she says. ‘Well, all right then. When we get home?’

‘When we get home,’ I promise as I turn on the radio. Valerie joins in with Robbie Williams’ latest hit. ‘Sing, Mummy! Sing!’

We sing until we turn into Juliana van Stolberg Avenue in Hillegersberg and park in front of the house. And then I realise that I’d managed to forget about Bilal for the past fifteen minutes.

‘I’ve told you enough times that you should leave that place! This cannot happen again!’ Raoul says.

I didn’t make chips, but a curry dish as a treat. Raoul got home at half past five and it was really hard not to assail him immediately. I waited until we had finished dinner. Afterwards we stayed at the table chatting as usual, while Valerie watched TV, leaving us to talk in peace.

‘How many times have I told you to look for a better school? That bunch aren’t worth wasting your time on. I hope you’ve finally realised that. You’ve got a child of your own here who needs you, you know.’ Raoul leans back a little, one hand on the table, one on the arm of his chair and looks at me with a mixture of compassion and exasperation.

‘Excuse me, are you trying to say that it’s my fault? That I asked for this?’

‘No, of course not.’ Raoul leans over the table towards me and places his hand on top of mine. He asks if I can deny that I work in the kind of environment where this kind of thing happens. He’s always been worried about something like this, he says, and he hopes I’ll finally see sense.

‘See sense?’ I repeat.

‘You can start at Software International right away if you like.’

I sigh and study the congealed curry on my plate, the grains of rice on the white tablecloth, and the yellow stains around Valerie’s place. I’ve never managed to convey the satisfaction I get from teaching to Raoul. He only seems to see the problems. He calls my work ‘farting into the wind’. If I were to transfer to Saint Laurens College, a private school in Hillegersberg, he might be able to understand it, but a poor, state school.

‘It’s not all trouble at school,’ I say. ‘I have a great time with most of the students. I feel like I can affect their lives in a positive way, and I don’t just mean in terms of their education. You know that.’

Raoul doesn’t look like he does know. He remains silent.

‘So you’re just going to carry on,’ he says eventually. ‘Despite the students you’re working your ass off for coming at you with knives. Are you surprised that I find your logic hard to follow?’

‘I do understand your point, but every profession has its risks,’ I say. ‘If you were a policeman, I wouldn’t keep banging on at you to find safer work, would I?’

‘I sell software,’ Raoul reminds me.

‘But you wanted to be a pilot and you would have been if your eyesight had been good enough,’ I say. ‘That’s not a job without risks.’

Raoul raises his hands in the air and lets them drop. ‘Fine! Go and teach those half-wits tomorrow. Pretend that nothing has happened. But tell me how I’m going to explain it to Valerie when her mother gets seriously injured one day.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, Raoul. You’re acting like this happens on a daily basis.’

‘Once is enough as far as I’m concerned.’

I’m bewildered. I’d have been better off saying nothing. Instead of being worried and supportive, he’s twisted it into proof that I shouldn’t teach. Don’t get me wrong, I love Raoul dearly, but sometimes he’s got the sensitivity of a grizzly bear. A memory flashes through my mind: Valerie wanting to cycle without training wheels and being too impatient to wait for Raoul after he’d unscrewed them. She rode off and of course she crashed. There she was on the ground with a bloody nose and grazed knees. The first thing Raoul did was to ask her why she hadn’t listened to him. He picked her up and consoled her afterwards, but I would have done it the other way round.

I stack up the plates and dishes and take them to the kitchen where I rinse the scraps of food off the plates. I finish clearing the table with agitated movements and shake out the tablecloth outside. Raoul doesn’t get up or come over to me until I’ve put the vase of peonies back on the table and pushed the chairs in. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me towards him. I let him kiss my neck, but don’t react to his tenderness.

‘I’m upset by it, don’t you understand that?’ Raoul says softly.

I lean back against him and feel his body warmth through my clothes.

‘I’m upset too,’ I say. ‘A bit of understanding and support would be nice.’

‘Sorry,’ Raoul says, his cheek against mine. ‘Have the police already done anything?’

I take a deep breath. ‘I didn’t report it.’

‘Oh?’

I hear the amazement in his voice and brace myself, but his reaction takes me by surprise.

‘Oh well, I don’t suppose there’s much they could do.’

Raoul pulls me even more tightly towards him, ‘If he’d really stabbed you, he’d have gone to prison, but I think they’d only caution him and let him go for this.’

I study the bright peonies on the table. ‘Yes,’ I say finally, after my day of turmoil, reflection and changes of mind. ‘That’s what I think as well.’

10.

We go to bed late. I have a hot, soothing shower and as I dry myself and apply night cream, I hear Raoul checking the locks more attentively than usual and I’m glad that he’s here to make me feel safe. I snuggle against him in bed and close my eyes with a deep sense of security.

‘Sleep well.’ Raoul kisses me on the forehead.

‘Sleep well,’ I murmur.

I’m exhausted, but after an hour I’m still curled up against Raoul, waiting to fall asleep. I roll onto my other side. Raoul is snoring lightly and I tap him before it gets any louder. I know what’s coming next.

‘What is it?’ Raoul mumbles, drunk with sleep.

‘You’re snoring,’ I say quietly. ‘Lie on your other side for a bit.’

‘I’m not snoring.’

‘You were snoring, I could hear it.’

‘I’m not even asleep,’ Raoul says.

‘You were asleep.’

‘So why didn’t I hear anything if I was awake then?’ Raoul asks, also irritated.

‘Because you were asleep! You were asleep and snoring!’

Raoul mutters, turns over and after a few minutes is asleep again. And snoring.

I sigh and get some earplugs from the bedside drawer. But even my earplugs can’t combat the number of decibels Raoul can produce at night. After fifteen minutes I give up and take my pillow to the spare bedroom. I set the alarm clock on the bedside table and close the curtains with a single swipe. As I’m doing it, my subconscious registers something strange. I open the curtain a chink. Someone is standing outside our house, on the other side of the street. A dark figure with a cigarette in his hand. I presume it’s a man – I can’t imagine that a woman would stand there smoking a cigarette in the middle of the night.

Bilal comes to mind.

I try my hardest to make him out, but I can’t from this distance. Finally the figure moves off, with the slouchy, indifferent walk so typical of my students. Shivering in the cool night air, I watch until he has disappeared. What should I do? There’s no point calling the police – even if they find him, there’s nothing illegal about staring at a house in the middle of the night.

I turn back the duvet and slide into bed, but the chances that I’ll fall asleep now are virtually nil. The image of the sharp point of the knife forces itself into my mind and is amplified many times in the darkness.

I’m up at the crack of dawn the next morning and leave the house half an hour earlier than normal. Raoul and Valerie are usually getting up when I put on my coat, and I give them a quick kiss before I get into my car. This morning they are still asleep, but I enjoy the quietness of my departure. Thoughts race through my mind: I want to go to school and yet I’m dreading entering the building. What am I going to do if I come across Bilal? Jan might have suspended him, but that won’t necessarily keep him away.

I drive through the misty Rotterdam rush hour with a sense of foreboding. A grimy figure jumps out in front of the car at a red light. He holds up a sponge and a bucket. I nod, and he washes my windscreen with sweeping strokes. It only takes him a minute. I gaze sympathetically at his neglected appearance, his long knotted beard and worn-out army jacket. I let my window down slightly and say, ‘Hi, Tom!’

Tom gives me a smile that’s missing at least two teeth and holds out his hand.

I press five euros into his hand. ‘Get yourself a good meal for once, Tom.’ Sometimes I give him one euro, others two and occasionally even a ten euro note. It depends how cold it is outside and how bedraggled he’s looking.

‘Thank you, miss,’ Tom says. ‘You’ve got a good heart.’

I smile because he always says that and I suspect he uses the same line on everybody.

‘I mean it,’ he says. ‘There are enough people who spit in my face or try to run me over. It’s dangerous work, lady. Dangerous work for just a few euros.’ Before I can say anything back, he’s walked off, still talking loudly.

Tom is always at the same crossroads. He usually walks along the queue of cars with a bucket and gets a bit of loose change without having to get his sponge out. I find it impossible to drive on and ignore Tom. In fact I can’t ignore anyone.

A while back, the action group ‘Keep Rotterdam Safe’ called on Rotterdammers not to give money to beggars. The morning before that, I’d given Tom ten euros, a bag of currant buns and Raoul’s windproof ski jacket. I can still picture him standing there with them.

‘Now I’m all set!’ he’d said.

The following day he was at the crossroads, wearing the red jacket. I’ve never dared tell Raoul about it – he’s not that keen on beggars and tramps – but he’s never missed the jacket.

‘No one has to live like that in Holland,’ he always says. ‘They could look for a job, and if they don’t want to, I’m sorry, but they shouldn’t hassle people who do work for their money.’

The topic keeps cropping up in our conversations and occasionally causes rows. But it’s also how we met in the first place.

11.

I was twenty-two and still a student. Raoul was twenty-six. I was in my final year of teacher training at college in Rotterdam and travelled in from Berkel & Rodenrijs, where I lived with my parents.

My train was a commuter train, full of passengers who were delighted if they could find a seat and doze unashamedly or open up their morning newspaper. But the majority went through the daily torture of standing, packed together.

It was usually quite quiet when I got on and I’d be fortunate enough to get a window seat, safely out of reach of the pointy elbows in the central aisle. Engrossed in a book or course material, the time passed quickly and I barely noticed my fellow passengers.

One bright spring morning in March I was staring out of the window at the cows in the meadows and the clouds that seemed to rise up out of the mist. A loud shout broke my reverie. It came from the area next to the doors, where a few people were standing. Two young men stood facing each other. One was wearing a tracksuit, he was bald and had a nose ring; the other was dressed in a smart coat and had neatly combed hair – the picture of decency and good sense. But that must have been just show because the bald guy was shouting, ‘What did you say? Mind your own business, you prick!’

Everyone in the carriage was pretending not to have noticed.

The well-dressed man said something back, at which point the bald guy flew at his throat, pushed him against the corridor wall and punched him in the head.

I pushed past the man sitting next to me and rushed towards them.

‘Stop that!’ I threw open the glass doors. ‘Both of you!’

I threw myself between their fists. That stopped them momentarily – the scruffy guy looked at me in amazement, then irritation, and gave me a harmless shove. The well-dressed man seemed to be wondering if I was in my right mind. The scruffy guy tried to push me aside, but I didn’t let him. I grabbed his arm, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Stop! Please! Can’t you just discuss it?’

His expression was so full of fury I was frightened he’d hit me, but at that moment someone behind me said, ‘She’s right. Come on, lads, this isn’t the way.’

I looked around and saw the tall, dark-haired man who’d been sitting opposite me in the carriage. The fight was stopped, the two parties separated with final hateful glances at each other and I returned to my seat.

The man who’d come to my assistance sat back down opposite me. ‘That was brave of you,’ he said, ‘but also a bit foolish.’

‘Everyone pretending not to notice is the obvious solution, isn’t it?’ I snapped back, my cheeks flushed.

‘One of them could easily have had a knife.’

‘Don’t be silly, not everyone walks around with a knife.’

The man looked like he doubted that. ‘It can’t get much worse than it is.’

His words turned out to be prophetic. At the time knife-incidents were on the rise – these days the ticket inspectors won’t get involved in arguments on the trains.

Nowadays every suspect character who comes into Rotterdam is preventatively searched, street shootings have become banal, many secondary schools are equipped with surveillance cameras and metal detectors, and children who witness crimes are shot dead when they’re out playing. The violence is mounting and paralysing us all.

‘Why did you get up then?’ I asked my rescuing knight.

He shrugged. ‘I could hardly have stayed in my seat while a girl was sorting it out, could I? They might have stabbed you.’

‘They might have stabbed each other too.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, in a way that suggested it wasn’t something he would worry about.

We got out together at Rotterdam Central Station, said goodbye and went our separate ways. Then he came back towards me.

‘I’ll walk with you a while,’ he said. ‘We don’t know where those guys are now.’

He accompanied me to the tram and I began to suspect ulterior motives. But he didn’t ask for my phone number or suggest we meet for a drink. He put me on the tram, the tram moved off and that was that.

At least, for that day. I saw him again the next day, standing on the platform, and happiness swept through me. He came over as soon as he spotted me.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘It’s me. You know, from yesterday.’

‘Yes, I do remember. Sometimes, if I really try hard, I can even remember things that happened the day before yesterday.’

He laughed and we took the train together. His name was Raoul and he’d just set up his own software company in Rotterdam. From the way he told me all of this, I could tell that he was single.

I was telling him about my course when three scruffy-looking musicians entered our carriage. Two played a brisk off-key tune on the guitar while the other one went around with a smelly cap. Raoul shook his head, but I gave the man some small change. Quite a few people gave me irritated glances.

‘See those dirty looks,’ I muttered to Raoul.

‘Some people find it annoying, they want to read their papers in peace in the mornings,’ Raoul commented. ‘Giving money only encourages begging.’

‘I’d rather they asked for money than pickpocketed my purse,’ I replied.

Raoul grinned. ‘I bet you give a euro to those people who don’t have quite enough cash for their train ticket.’

I blushed and Raoul shook his head pityingly. ‘You’d have been better off training to be a social worker.’

The train came to a standstill. The conductor announced that we’d be delayed for an indeterminate period of time, regretfully. I didn’t find it at all regretful.

As we continued talking, I studied Raoul. Was anything unattractive about him? By the time we pulled into Rotterdam station, I still hadn’t found it.