Shadow Sister

Elisa

13.

The school entrance was a sea of flowers. They set up a makeshift altar, with Lydia’s photo in the middle, surrounded by candles and flowers. The teachers and students held a minute’s silence for her.

The police investigation is still in full swing. Bilal Assrouti was questioned and released. Everyone Lydia knew has been questioned, including me. For the first few days, the newspapers were full of the brutal murder, and my sister’s photo was on the news.

Detective Noorda called around all the time after Lydia’s death. I would hear him ringing the bell, but I never opened the door. I didn’t answer the telephone either. Finally I let him in and heard him out. He asked me all kinds of questions and assured me that they’d find the murderer. He talked about gunpowder spores, ballistics and cartridge cases. In the beginning he’d talk to me for a long time, but now he gets up faster to leave and the intervals between visits are longer.

Sylvie and Thomas pulled me out of the black hole. They come round every day with shopping, and they talk to me even though I barely respond. They cook for me and open the windows from time to time so that the fresh spring air blows away the stale smell in the house.

Today Thomas is visiting.

‘Have you done anything recently?’ he asks.

I tell him that I’ve been keeping busy, that I don’t lie in bed the whole day. That I’ve made a collage of pictures of Lydia and myself, a collage covering a whole wall. I’ve used recent photos as well as ones from our childhood so that in the morning when I open my eyes our whole life stretches out before me.

Thomas goes into the bedroom and looks at the wall, speechless. Then he says that we’re going out to eat tonight.

Later I go out to dinner with him, dressed in my pink and orange skirt with the matching top. Thomas looks at me in surprise when he comes to pick me up, but all he says is, ‘You look…different.’

Once we’re seated in the restaurant, he says, ‘That’s what you wore for Lydia’s funeral.’

I nod without looking up from the menu.

‘Are you going to wear skirts now because Lydia wore them?’

I close the menu and put it down on the table. ‘Of course not. Why are you saying that?’

‘Because you’ve got one on now! Those are the clothes you bought with Lydia – that last time you went shopping together?’

I sigh and look to see if the waiter is coming. I should never have told Thomas about the shopping trip. It was a lovely afternoon – I’ve got precious memories of it – and it’s annoying that he’s bringing up that one false note. What does it matter if Lydia wanted to give me a makeover? What does it matter that she wouldn’t take no for an answer, that I was more or less forced to buy these clothes? She meant well. And I’m wearing the clothes a lot now.

Thomas had come round that evening after I’d been shopping with Lydia. The clothes were spread out on the sofa.

‘What’s all this?’ He held the bright skirt and top up, his eyebrows raised.

‘I bought them with Lydia.’

‘Aha,’ Thomas said.

That was all, but his voice was layered with many different things.

‘I like them,’ I said. ‘I’m not used to wearing skirts, but I don’t have to wear trousers my whole life, do I?’

‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘But you also don’t have to wear exactly what Lydia likes.’

Thomas used to make comments like that a lot. Of course I wasn’t blind to the fact that things hadn’t clicked between him and Lydia. It was a shame, but Thomas and Sylvie – who Lydia didn’t like either – were my friends and it wasn’t the end of the world if Lydia didn’t like them.

‘What do you like about Thomas?’ Lydia once asked when we were sitting in her back garden. ‘He sticks to you like a limpet. It’d drive me crazy.’

It was a hot day last year. Valerie was in the paddling pool and I was explaining how I’d helped Thomas to photograph a disgraced politician for the Rotterdam Daily. That’s to say, I was planning to tell her about it in detail, but Lydia didn’t give me the chance.

‘He might be a bit different,’ I said, ‘but he’s a very good friend.’

‘A bit different?’ Lydia’s manner was disapproving. ‘He’s a weirdo. He doesn’t look at you, he leers at you. And when he smiles it’s like his mouth is twitching.’

She was exaggerating, but the grain of truth in her words made me uncomfortable. Instead of defending Thomas or telling Lydia how horrible I felt when she attacked him, I kept silent. I turned my head away, in exactly the same way as she always did. I saw the movement reflected in the window of the house and Lydia did too. You could say a lot about her, but not that she didn’t pick up signals.

‘I guess you form a bond when you’ve known each other as long as you have,’ she said. ‘And you’ve never had that many friends.’

As if I was socially handicapped. But I didn’t feel like a fight, so I didn’t let my irritation show. Instead, I looked over at Valerie, who was stretched out on her stomach in the pool, and I pretended to be shocked every time she splashed me. When I looked up again, Lydia was studying me.

‘Elisa,’ she said. ‘You’re not in love with him, are you?’

‘Certainly not, we’re just friends.’

‘It just worries me. I don’t think Thomas is good for you, not even as a friend.’

I frowned and wanted to snap at her, which is unusual for me, but she changed the subject.

‘How do you like Valerie’s new bikini?’ Valerie stood up proudly. ‘Nice, isn’t it? She chose it herself!’

Lydia should see Thomas now. A warm tide of affection washes over me. So many people have tried to console me: some have tried to talk me out of my grief, others have ignored it. I’ve heard so many meaningless expressions – ‘life goes on’, ‘you’ve still got so much to be thankful for’. Thomas and Sylvie have never made that mistake. Well, Sylvie sometimes, but she’s also been so supportive that I forgive her. But Thomas has always been able to adapt to my mood. If I don’t feel like talking, he doesn’t either. If my tone is light, so is his. And if I need to cry, he wraps his arms around me and I see that his eyes are brimming.

I look on with some sympathy while Thomas pulls a beer mat apart, searching for something to talk about. I feel sorry for him through my grief. It’s the first time since Lydia died that I’ve worried about what another person is feeling. Perhaps that’s a good sign. I make an effort to chat, but after a while the inevitable silence descends. I look into Thomas’s eyes. Warm, brown, with a small splash of yellow-gold in the middle.

‘How’s the police investigation going?’ he asks.

The question sends us back to the subject he was just trying to avoid. ‘I don’t think the police are any further than they were at the start. First they cross-examined Raoul, then me, then my parents, Lydia’s colleagues and students, but I don’t know what they’re doing now. Bilal Assrouti has an alibi.’

‘That he was at a night club with a group of friends?’ Thomas says, his voice doubtful. ‘Don’t the police keep you informed about any new developments?’

‘If there’s been any.’

‘Perhaps it was random after all – a mugging gone wrong,’ Thomas says.

‘Someone lay in wait for her, someone who knew what time she’d get home, someone who waited for their chance and…’ My voice breaks and Thomas looks at me with concern. I swallow, take a sip of water. ‘You know what…’

Thomas looks at me.

‘Sometimes I get the feeling.’ I fall silent, but after a while I go on, choosing my words with care. ‘Every now and again I get the feeling that Lydia is here. Like she’s standing behind me and looking over my shoulder.’

Thomas involuntarily looks at the spot behind me.

‘When my grandfather died, I didn’t really feel like he was gone for good and I was just a child then. I had intense dreams about him and sometimes I got the feeling that he was in my bedroom.’

‘Really?’

I know what he’s thinking. Thomas is a down-to-earth person, he’s not that into mystical experiences.

‘You don’t believe in all that, do you?’

‘No,’ Thomas says, and I laugh. That’s why I like him so much. He’ll never agree just because he’s afraid of upsetting me, he always stays true to himself. It’s good. I don’t need my friends to be acting differently right now.

Thomas sips his beer. ‘There are so many of those stories. People have regression therapy and think they once lived in the time of the Pharaohs, people say they see spirits and communicate with them.’

‘Have you ever seen that program with Char?’ I ask.

Char is an American medium who claims to be able to contact the dead. I always watch her, but Thomas is clearly less impressed with her paranormal gifts. He pulls a face and does a good impression of Char, bending towards me, taking my hand and reciting all the letters of the alphabet in a serious tone. Then he imitates the client bursting into tears after a session with Char and sobbing, ‘Yes, M! My mother’s name is Johanna but her fourth middle name is Maria!’

I can’t help but laugh.

‘It’s all guesswork,’ Thomas says in his normal voice.

‘Yep.’ I survey the last piece of steak on my plate. After a long pause, I look up and say, ‘But I still believe in it.’

Thomas looks at me, his expression troubled again. ‘Well,’ he says at last, ‘it might be good for you to believe in that.’

14.

Raoul is the only person I feel comfortable with at the moment. He’s the only one who knows how it feels. And my parents, of course, but their grief is too large to leave room for me.

We go for a walk in the Bergse woods and end up having coffee on the outdoor terrace of a restaurant. Valerie’s spending the day with Raoul’s parents.

‘How are you getting on now?’ I say. ‘Are you coping?’

I’m asked that question so often myself that it makes me feel ill. How do people expect you to be getting on? And of course you’re coping, you have to, you can hardly give up breathing. But my own grief gives me the right to ask such a clichéd question and I have to because Raoul looks dreadful. So dreadful my stomach bunches up.

Raoul stares at the black liquid in his mug as if he’s wondering why he would have any need for it now. Why carry on eating, drinking, and all those other trivial acts when so much emotion and pain is racing through your body?

‘Do you know what kills me?’ he says. ‘All those people who say “time heals” or that I should be “grateful” for all the lovely memories I have of Lydia. That she’s gone to a “better place”. She’s lying under the cold ground!’

I remain silent, not at all taken aback by his outburst.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I constantly get the feeling that Lydia is close by.’

The very second I say that there’s a gust of wind. We should be sheltered by the restaurant building.

‘I keep dreaming about her,’ I continue. ‘About earlier, when we were little, and our childhood. We had so many rows.’

Raoul looks up from his coffee. ‘I always argued with my sister too.’

‘I know it’s normal, but I regret it now. Every nasty word I said to her, every mean thought.’ My voice quavers.

Raoul puts his hand on top of mine.

‘You mustn’t start thinking like that, Elisa, or you’ll go under. Do you think I don’t suffer from regrets?’