Литагент HarperCollins - The Reunion

I try to concentrate on As the World Turns, but Bart looks back at me from the screen and Isabel has taken over the role of Rose. I zap to another station but it’s useless. The memories won’t let up. I’m getting flashbacks of things I’d long since forgotten.

I switch off the TV, pull on a jacket, get my red handbag.

Plastic plants. Where can you find them?

Inside the Bijenkorf department store I melt into the masses of shoppers. Why do the shops get so full as soon as the sun comes out? Why are people inside when the weather is so nice? I guess they must all be fed up with their sofas, chairs, clothes, shoes, jumpers and trousers, because every floor is jam-packed. The escalator takes me up and I see what I’m looking for right away: white gypsophila that looks real, pink and white sweet peas in lovely stone pots. I pick up a basket from next to the checkout and fill it with unusual greed. Tomorrow I’m going to clean the windows, clear out the cupboards and chuck out all my useless junk.

The checkout girl rings up the plants with impossibly long fingernails and says tonelessly, ‘That’ll be fifty-five euros and ten cents, please.

‘How much?’ I ask, shocked.

‘Fifty-five euros, ten cents,’ she repeats.

‘So much?’

‘Yeah,’ she says.

Fifty-five euros for a few fake branches and a couple of pots.

‘Forget it.’ I put the sweet peas back into the basket. ‘I’ll put them back myself.’

I go downstairs and glance at a rack of skirts. A saleswoman comes towards me. She has short black hair, dark-blue eyes and for a heart-stopping moment I think it is Isabel come back from the dead.

I’m rushing towards the escalator. Get downstairs, down, away from here. Outside, fast. Back on the bike, around all the shoppers. Home, back to my nest. I ride as fast as I can and arrive home in a complete sweat. Bike back in the corridor, lock, upstairs. The door closes behind me with a reassuring click.

No messages on the answering machine.

No flowers.

Only memories.

Isabel Hartman went missing on a hot day in May, nine years ago. She was riding home from school but never got there. We were fifteen. I’d already lost her before that; when we were both in Year 7 our paths began to diverge. But she was a determining factor in my life. She still is—she’s beginning to dominate my thoughts again.

From the beginning of primary school Isabel was my best friend and we were inseparable. We spent hours in her bedroom. Isabel had a really cool table and chairs where we’d install ourselves with coke, nachos and dipping sauce. We’d listen to music and chat about everything we were interested in: friendship, love, her first bra, who in class had had her first period and who hadn’t.

I can still remember how it felt when we began to grow apart.

Isabel and I were both twelve and starting secondary school. We’d ride there together, and enter separate worlds. I would fade into the background and Isabel would blossom. The moment she rode in to the school grounds there was a clear change in her posture. She sat up straighter, stopped giggling, and would look around her with an almost queenly arrogance. Even the older boys looked at her.

Isabel began to dress differently. She was already a B cup when my hormones were still asleep and I still had a helmet brace. She had her long, dark hair cut off and started wearing a leather jacket and ripped jeans; she had her nose and navel pierced.

One day she rode away from me the second we got into the school grounds, she locked her bike quite far from mine, and walked towards the others with a self-confidence which won her attention and respect.

I didn’t dare go after her. I could only look on at Isabel and the other girls from my class. They were all tall and slim and dressed alike in tight tops which showed off their bellies. Long hair, dyed blonde or red, floated around their heads or was casually tied up, with refined wisps, which framed their sun-tanned faces. They all smoked, and chatted in a language I didn’t speak.

I realised that I’d been missing something they’d all been aware of and that it was too late to change.

Isabel had epilepsy, but very few people knew. Her really bad fits were controlled by medicine, but sometimes she’d have blackouts or light fits. I could usually tell if one was coming. If she had time, she’d give me a sign, but mostly I’d see it in her blank expression or in the twitches in her hands.

When we were still riding to school and back together, sometimes we’d have to stop because a black-out was coming. I’d lay our bikes on the roadside and we’d sit down on the grass, if necessary in the pouring rain, in our waterproof jackets. After a bad attack, Isabel would be really tired and I’d push her home on her bike.

It was like this for a long time but our friendship would always end the moment we entered the school grounds.

On the day she disappeared we hadn’t been friends for two years. That’s why I was riding quite a way behind her when we left the school. She was with Miriam Visser who she was hanging out with a lot at the time, and I didn’t feel like latching on. They wouldn’t have appreciated it either. I needed to go the same way and slowed down so that I wouldn’t catch up with them. Isabel and Miriam were riding slowly, hands on each other’s arms. I can still see their straight backs and hear their carefree voices. It was nice weather; summer was in the air.

At a certain point, Miriam had to turn right and Isabel and I would usually carry straight on. Miriam did indeed turn right but so did Isabel. I followed them, I don’t know why because it wasn’t my usual route. I was probably thinking of going home through the dunes, something my parents had forbidden because the dunes were so isolated. But I did go that way quite often even so.

We rode behind each other to the Jan Verfailleweg which led to the dunes. Miriam lived in one of the side streets. She turned off and held up her hand to Isabel who continued alone. This surprised me. I’d been expecting Isabel to go to Miriam’s house.

I carried on behind Isabel, keeping a safe distance. She dismounted for a red light at an intersection. I stopped pedalling, hoping that the light would quickly turn green. It would be embarrassing to find ourselves next to each other and to have to find something to say. Then a small van stopped behind her shielding me as I drew closer. The light turned green and the van set off in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Isabel got back on her bike and went on her way. If I’d also gone straight I would have ended up right behind her and I didn’t want that. I turned right and took a slight detour to the dunes.

That was the last time I saw Isabel.

My memories of the time are a little foggy. It is strange how unimportant details remain razor sharp in your mind, while everything of significance is lost. For example, I can’t remember anything else special about that day, just that I rode behind Isabel and Miriam and how trustingly they rested their hands on each other’s arm. I can’t even remember the moment I learned that Isabel was missing. I only know what my mother told me about it later. Our parents had known each other earlier when we were still best friends, but that had petered out too, with our friendship. That evening, Isabel’s mother had telephoned mine when Isabel didn’t come home. My mother came upstairs to my room where I was busy doing my homework and asked me if I knew where Isabel was. I said I didn’t. That didn’t surprise her—Isabel hadn’t been round for ages.

Isabel’s parents had called the police right away. A fifteen-year-old girl who had stayed out all night? She was probably at a friend’s house, the duty officer had said. Isabel’s father spent the whole night combing the village and neighbouring areas while her mother called everyone who knew her daughter.