Hanneke Hendrix

The Dyslexic Hearts Club

Translated from the Dutch by David Doherty

World Editions

breda 2016

Published in Great Britain in 2016 by World Editions Ltd., London

www.worldeditions.org

Copyright © Hanneke Hendrix, 2014

English translation copyright © David Doherty, 2016

Cover design Multitude

Image credit © Kate Abolins/Millennium Images/HH

The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.

First published as De dyslectische-hartenclub in the Netherlands in 2014 by De Geus bv, po Box 1878, 4801 bw Breda

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

isbn 978-94-6238-068-4

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of
the Dutch Foundation for Literature

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#

You could point to moments earlier in my life when it all started to go wrong. But the more I think about it, the more I believe things really began to change the first time I saw Anna. That stuff about everyone sharing the blame is just soft talk from women’s magazines, if you ask me. I don’t buy it. Life is what happens to you. They’ll tell you a person always has a choice, but that’s not true. We’re all just muddling along. There is no plan. The only clear sight is hindsight.

At first I lay for what seemed like ages in a room of my own. They kept it dark. Machines beeped. Cool hands touched me. Then I was moved. In silence they wheeled me down corridors, bumping me into a wall here, a doorpost there. I counted the lights on the ceiling as I rattled along—twenty-one till I came to a halt and they turned my bed. A man in a police uniform sitting beside the door gave me a quick wave. I tried to guess his age but couldn’t. Instead of waving back, I turned my head away and closed my eyes. The orderlies rolled me roughly into the room and when I opened my eyes again I was looking at a white curtain. As if I wasn’t there, they hooked me up to a bunch of machines and left. The curtain stayed closed, the door clicked shut, and that’s when I heard it: there were other people in here with me. Someone across from me and someone over to the right, each breathing heavily in their own way. Apart from that it was quiet. None of the hustle and bustle I had heard outside the room, no nurses chatting, no trolleys trundling past, no soles squeaking on linoleum. Nothing.

I must have dozed off, because suddenly I was jolted awake by a loud voice beside me.

‘Anna van Veen?’ said a nurse, sliding open my curtain an inch or two.

‘Mrs Van Veen? Can you hear me?’

I nodded and lifted my hand to feel my head.

‘Mrs Van Veen?’ the nurse shouted a second time.

Her voice was piercing as well as loud. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine,’ I croaked.

I felt my side. Apart from a collapsed lung and assorted cuts and burns, things were looking up. The nurse ran her hands gingerly through my hair, examined the skin behind my ears, checked my bandages and the machine with the tube that burrowed into my body.

‘There’s no need to chain you up for the time being!’

The touch of her hands was as soft and gentle as her voice was loud.

‘You’ll be staying here for a while,’ she hollered. ‘With your new roommates. You’re coming on a treat. Isn’t that good news? Mrs Van Veen?’

I nodded. She smiled. I felt my head again and my fingertips tingled. The nurse smeared the bare patches on my scalp with dollops of Vaseline.

‘They make this stuff from petroleum. Funny, isn’t it? The thought of rubbing petroleum on burned skin always makes me chuckle. It’s like magic. Don’t you reckon, Mrs Van Veen?’

I shrugged. She spread some Vaseline on the stubble where my eyebrows used to be and ran her thumb down my cheek. She smiled at me again.

‘You’re going to be just fine,’ she said. ‘You wait and see. I know these things.’

‘Okay,’ I said.

She jotted something down on the clipboard and hung it on the hook at the foot of my bed. I wanted to ask her how long I’d been here. I looked up at her.

‘We’ll leave the curtain closed for now,’ she said. ‘Give you time to get used to your new surroundings.’

I’ve never been a people person. I can’t abide people who say they’re a people person.

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Or would you like it open?’

I shook my head.

‘Ring the bell if you need anything.’

She pointed to a red button beside my bed.

‘If the button’s working, that is,’ she added. ‘Those things don’t always cooperate. The wiring around here has a habit of letting us down.’

I took another look at the button—a glowing red dot in a haze of white and beige. More than anything, I wanted to latch on to her white coat and beg her to take me back to my old room, where I’d been on my own. No TV, no magazines, only the beeping of the machines and the hum of the pumps and someone to give me the occasional once-over, as if checking a houseplant for greenfly. But I’m coming on a treat, or so she said. I should be happy. As she disappeared through the opening in the curtain, she turned around.

‘So if no one comes it means the bell’s not working and you’ll have to let out a good old-fashioned cry for help. Or you could always send Mrs Vandersteen to fetch the cavalry.’

I nodded.

‘Sure you don’t want a magazine to flick through?’

I shook my head.

‘You can’t get out of bed, you know, so once I’m gone you’ll have nothing to do. Positive you don’t want something to keep you occupied?’

I shook my head and thought about the tube sticking out of my side, and the daily ritual of the bedpan. What would that be like, now I had company? No sign of needing to go yet. That was something, at least. Perhaps some kind of distraction, just in case, wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I spied a little notepad sticking out of her breast pocket and cleared my throat.

‘Do you have a spare one of those?’ I said softly.

She looked down at her breast pocket.

‘Would you like to write something?’ she asked.

I nodded, and she handed me the pad and a pencil.

Before they wheeled me in they had told me I was to be transferred to a secure hospital as soon as possible. They hadn’t exactly showered me with tender loving care on the way here, rattling my bones every time they bumped the bed. Still I had survived, though perhaps that was the irony. Chances were I’d be sharing a cell before long. This was the lesser of two evils, most likely.

So by the sound of things there were two other people in the room. One kept hawking up phlegm. They didn’t say a word to each other. For long stretches all I could hear was the turning of pages. The old magazines that do the rounds in hospitals, pages fingered by one set of hands, then another, then another, flicking through last week’s news and gossip, killing time, the things you do in a place where all you can do is hope and wait. I heard gentle snoring, the sound of a TV through crackling old speakers. Now and then I heard the phlegmy woman shuffle over to the toilet for a pee. I lay there and listened in silence. Then I fell asleep.

I was woken up with a bang by the breakfast trolley, walloping through the door like a battering ram. During the night I’d had to ring for the bedpan. The nurse with the loud voice had shoved it resolutely under my backside—cold, hard, and fit for purpose. Her silence seemed to amplify the clatter. I’d been mortified by the thought of my roommates listening in, and though my bladder was fit to burst, it felt like a lifetime before the first drops began to flow. After that I’d slept soundly. No one came to visit. No visitors in the room on my own and none now that I was sharing with the others. I can’t say I was surprised. I knew my place.

The breakfast trolley trundled past and the woman to my right was seized by a coughing fit. I glanced at the little clock on one of the machines beside my bed. Eight o’clock on the dot. I reached for my notepad, clamped the pencil between my teeth and began searching for words. Dear Nelis, I wrote. The person in charge of the trolley didn’t say a thing. I couldn’t help but notice. People don’t like keeping quiet. There are rules and regulations for how much you should say. Safe margins. Saying nothing isn’t good, but neither is saying too much. Be friendly to all and sundry, except for nutjobs. The nutjobs of the world need to be put in their place so they know that they have to make more of an effort. I looked at the words on the page and decided this would only be a rough draft. I crossed out Dear. Then came the sound of plastic trays being slid onto bedside tables and liquid being poured into cups. Coffee.

My curtain was yanked aside. The runners in the rails gave a little shriek, as if they’d got a fright themselves. The nurse gave me a lingering look and I gazed over her shoulder in an attempt to avoid her eyes. Her ash-blonde hair was swept up into a big fat bun at the back of her head. You might have called her friendly, but for the telltale lines around her mouth that revealed she was no stranger to the fairground of mangled dreams. Six balls but never a coconut. Behind her I saw two doors and a washbasin. Everything here was beige.

‘Good morning,’ I sputtered. My voice was a creaky yodel.

The queen of the fairground maintained her silence and hurled the tray onto my bedside table with the steely conviction of a discus thrower. It was all I could do to halt its trajectory. The slices of bread skidded off the plate and my pencil rolled onto the floor. When I looked up she was standing to attention and holding two thermos flasks in the air. I didn’t have a clue what she meant. She bobbed the flasks up and down impatiently.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

I pointed to the flask with the T on it. She poured. Perhaps she wasn’t a nurse at all but a volunteer who helped out. A trauma victim who had lost the power of speech.

‘Ah, just the ticket,’ I said, to be friendly. ‘Nothing beats a cuppa first thing in the morning.’

‘Don’t think you can sweet-talk me,’ she said in a tone that thwacked me in the face like a rubber band. ‘I know your type. And I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re out of here as soon as possible. Fourteen forms I have to fill in for the privilege of bringing a sweaty slice of cheese to your bedside. So you can cut the sweetness-and-light routine. I know your type.’

With a bang—what was it with this place and banging everything around?—she slammed the flask back down on the trolley and snapped the curtain closed. The trolley trundled off and the door clunked shut. For a while all I could hear was chewing and slurping. A knife clinked on a plate, a cup was returned to its saucer, then everything went quiet. Somebody was thinking. I could feel it.

‘An old writer once said… ’ It was the phlegmy voice. ‘I propose that from now on we defecate in public and eat our meals in private cubicles so no one has to see that filthy business. It’s a view you share, Mrs Van Veen, unless I’m very much mistaken.’

I’ve spent my whole life feeling ill at ease. It’s no big deal. That’s just the way it is. I liked being on my own. Nelis used to say it was because I was an only child, but through the years I’ve met plenty of only children who have no trouble getting along with other people. I never saw the problem, but people always seemed to take offence at the fact that I didn’t want to tag along, that I didn’t look forward to office excursions with my husband’s colleagues or weekends away with his family. They would try to force me, make me join in the fun. I’ve never understood how that works, why people are so keen for you to join in when it’s the last thing in the world you want.

‘Everyone was asking after you,’ Nelis would say when he got back.

When I stayed at home, people thought it reflected on them, that I meant something by it, that there was something wrong with them. You might think you’re playing the lead, the star of your own show, but when it comes right down to it you’re mostly just a bit player in other people’s lives. That’s how I see it, in any case.

‘They can get along fine without me,’ I’d reply. ‘It’s not like the party will grind to a halt because I’m not there.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Exactly,’ I said.

‘Just you wait. There’ll come a day when they won’t ask you anymore. Then it’ll be a different story.’

‘Lost something?’

The curtain twitched open. To my right, a slight, spindly woman wearing reading glasses and a neat turtleneck of bandages peeped through, brandishing my pencil. I nodded. Pinkie raised, she held it between her long, thin fingers like an antique tin whistle, a relic from ancient Ireland.

‘Are you a writer?’ she asked.

I shook my head. The woman put the pencil to her lips and pretended to take a couple of drags. She leaned in slowly, took the pencil from her mouth and said, ‘I’d kill for a cigarette.’

I swallowed.

‘I know you can speak,’ she said, shuffling closer. ‘So don’t go playing the deaf mute. We’ve got one of those already.’

She nodded over her shoulder at the room’s third occupant, still hidden behind the curtain. ‘Yes, you heard me!’ she yelled. ‘I’m talking about you!’

The spindly woman laid the pencil on my lap. I reckoned she must be about fifty. I still don’t know how old she is. It’s hard to imagine Vandersteen being born. More likely she appeared out of nowhere one day. Bam! There she stood in a puff of smoke, dusted herself down, and she was up and running. She shook me firmly by the hand.

‘Vandersteen,’ she said.

‘Mrs Van Veen,’ I said.

‘Yes, that much I’d heard,’ she said. ‘Our pal over there doesn’t have a name.’

‘Oh,’ I said, wondering whether she was a nutjob or whether to be friendly.

‘It says “Ms X” on her chart. I’ve already had a good read. The Grouch and Megaphone Mary don’t know who she is, either. The nurses, I mean.’

‘Is she conscious?’ I asked.

‘Of course she’s conscious,’ said Vandersteen, and shouted over her shoulder again. ‘She can hear me, all right!’

‘Apart from that we get along fine,’ she continued, returning to normal volume. ‘I think it’s safe to say she’s just a girl. Can’t be much more than twenty. It’s not easy to tell. The burns are pretty bad.’

‘Gosh,’ I said.

‘Sounds like you haven’t won any prizes for your extensive vocabulary either.’

I cleared my throat and looked at her. I had picked up the pencil from my lap and started fidgeting with it. Vandersteen crossed her arms and gazed at me intently. There was nothing alarming in her stare. It was friendly, if anything.

‘Have you been here long?’ I said at last.

‘A week or so. Two, three, four, five. After a while you lose count. In hospital, that is. Only moved to this room yesterday.’

Across the room I could hear Ms X breathing, slowly in through her nose and then out again in short sharp bursts.

‘What about her?’ I pointed across the room, hesitantly, though I knew Ms X couldn’t see me.

‘They wheeled her in here yesterday, too. Oh good, I thought, company at last. How wrong can you be? And then you arrived.’

‘I was in a room on my own at first,’ I said.

‘Did you prefer it that way?’

I shrugged.

‘After a while you cost too much.’

‘True,’ said Vandersteen. ‘And what do you reckon to that policeman parked outside our door?’

‘Huh?’ I said. There had been a policeman parked outside my other room, too, but Vandersteen didn’t need to know that.

‘A copper,’ said Vandersteen. ‘Moustache and everything. Been sat there from the moment they wheeled Tubby in.’

‘Tubby?’ I said.

Vandersteen pointed at the curtain without unfolding her arms.

‘Ms X.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘And you’re a burns patient, too,’ said Vandersteen. ‘That makes three of us. Tubby’s worst off. Her face is burned. But she’s already on the mend. You’re not in such a bad way. I could tell straight off. I worked in this hospital for years. How old are you? Let me guess. I have a knack. Thirty-four? Am I right? Are you thirty-four?’

‘Doesn’t she mind?’ I asked. ‘You calling her “Tubby” all the time?’

‘Let’s face it, either you’re tubby or you’re not,’ said Vandersteen. ‘I could just as easily not say it, but what would that change? I mean, if I called you tubby that would be nasty because you’re not exactly tubby but you’re not exactly slim either. How much do you weigh?’

I mumbled something.

‘155 pounds? 160?’

She raised her reading glasses and shot me an inquiring look.

‘150 pounds,’ I said quickly.

‘See what I mean… 155,’ said Vandersteen.

I wanted to tell her she was talking rubbish, tell her to button it and go back to bed.

‘If you say so,’ I replied.

‘So now we have two young ladies, one old bag, and a copper with a ’tache posted at the door. If you ask me, it was Miss Scarlet in the library with a candlestick.’

Vandersteen started banging on about the policeman not letting her out of the room for a smoke and refusing to even answer when she asked him why.

‘But surely they can’t just hold you here against your will, Mrs Vandersteen?’ I said.

I started fidgeting with the sheet. The closed curtain was making me claustrophobic, what with Vandersteen in here with me, and knowing I couldn’t make a move with that tube in my side.

‘You’re a sweetheart,’ said Vandersteen. ‘I can tell just by looking at you. And for God’s sake, drop the “Mrs.” With all these bandages I already feel like I’ve been scraped out of a sarcophagus.’

Vandersteen slipped back through the curtains and I caught a glimpse of a window. Clear blue sky. Somewhere on the other side of the building the sun must be shining. I thought of my last afternoon on the houseboat. It had been a warm afternoon, late summer. I had spent the whole day sitting out on the deck reading a book. I can’t remember the title. Funny that: you spend hours reading a book, a whole world is conjured up inside your head, and afterwards you can’t remember a thing about it. Not a thing. So you can’t even ask someone, ‘What was the name of that book again? You know, the one with the farmer and his wife and that remote country estate, and that murder and all those pigs.’ I can’t remember a thing about it. I can see myself sitting there, trouser legs rolled up, dipping a toe in the water. I’m holding a book and I can almost make out the letters, but that’s as far as I get before it all slides out of focus. The cover remains a black rectangle, black as an old Bible.

‘Well,’ said Vandersteen, after I’d heard her climb back into bed. ‘It’s a bundle of laughs sharing a room with you two chatterboxes. We should start a pub and call it The Twitchy Hip. That way everyone will know… ’

She paused.

‘Everyone’ll know… ’

Another pause.

‘Twitchy? Hip? Don’t all shout at once… ’

I wondered whether I should say something.

‘No takers? We’ll call it The Twitchy Hip, so everyone’ll know… there’s one joint that’s really jumping. Geddit? Geddit?’

The silence was deafening.

A few minutes later Vandersteen was snoring softly.

I asked the loud nurse to open the curtain for me. She took hold of the edge and gave me a wink.

‘Sure you’re up to it?’ she shouted. ‘Not worried that the ladies will disappoint?’

She laughed a loud tinkling laugh.

‘I can hear you, you know,’ Vandersteen muttered.

The runners slid slowly over the rail to reveal a stretch of wall, an open green-and-orange curtain, and then a square of sky, blue, with a cloud or two. The sun was shining. A bird flew past. Vandersteen was sitting upright in bed, with the windows directly behind her. She looked twig-like under her sheet, and the sunshine formed a halo around her head. In one hand she was holding a gossip magazine—the cover showed a girl being kissed by a prince. Bathed in light, Vandersteen looked like a miniature god. I had to squint to make her out. She made as if to wave, but she’d barely lifted her hand before she erupted into a coughing fit.

‘That’s roommate number one!’ shouted the nurse.

I waved at Vandersteen, still coughing as she lunged for the tissues on her bedside table. The curtain continued its journey along the rail, and Tubby appeared. A colossus wrapped in shiny red skin, half-hidden under an enormous pile of bedclothes. It was as if someone had screwed off her nose and her ears and painted over her face with red enamel. Tubby was a fortress, a citadel, a breakwater, an island rising out of the sea, or all of those things put together. Someone had tried to burn the fortress to the ground, but by the look of things they hadn’t succeeded.

‘Hi,’ I said.

I waved. She waved back. I tried not to let the shock show on my face.

‘That’s your lot,’ said the nurse. ‘Happy?’

I nodded.

‘Then I’m happy, too,’ she replied, and left the room. All at once I noticed how little space we were sharing. I reckoned the breakfast trolley could only just fit between the foot of my bed and Tubby’s across from me.

‘Is this a double room?’ I asked.

‘Well spotted,’ said Vandersteen. ‘They’re short on rooms with private facilities. And without them, our guardian angel out there would have to escort us to the toilet, as well. When I used to work here, we sometimes had to improvise and shift everything around, too. Not ideal, but what can you do? Could be worse. I’m doing just fine over here at the window.’

Tubby closed her eyes and folded her hands. I couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or praying.

‘Dearie me,’ said the grouchy nurse as she changed the sheets on Tubby’s bed. The door was open. I could just see the copper’s legs out in the corridor.

‘Do you realize it takes a nurse an extra eight minutes to tend to a patient who’s seriously overweight? Do you? No, you can’t talk, granted. But it’s true. You’re costing us an arm and a leg. Money that could have been better spent if you’d only learned to control your urges. Swallowed your tongue as well, have you?’

Tubby stood barefoot on the lino, bashful in her white nightgown. She looked helplessly toward the windows, where Vandersteen lay snoring.

‘I have to clean and talc all those folds of skin. And I’m not even talking about the burns. Nothing you can do about those, after all.’

I heard chuckling coming from the corridor, and saw the copper’s legs move. The grouchy nurse looked up, irritated.

‘But who has to lift all those flaps, hold them up and go at the creases with a damp cloth?’

Tubby looked at me. I gave what I hoped was a sympathetic shrug with my right shoulder.

‘Do you know,’ said the grouchy nurse as she whipped the bottom sheet from the bed, ‘why so few nurses are overweight?’

Because they’re not sitting at a desk all day, I thought. Tubby turned her gaze away from me. ‘Because day in, day out, we see how much trouble it is to scrub down all that fat.’

Furiously, she tugged the clean sheets over the bed.

‘Less grub, more exercise,’ she said. ‘It’s as simple as that.’

‘So beer’s out, too, is it?’ said Vandersteen, out of nowhere.

The nurse squeezed out a short laugh.

‘Ha! That’s worst of all,’ she said. ‘Beer.’

She spat out the word as if Vandersteen had said ‘dead foetus.’

‘Beer! You’d be better off chomping your way through a box of chocolate éclairs.’

‘And you reckon that’s right, do you?’ said Vandersteen.

‘Of course it’s right. Alcohol’s of no earthly use to anyone. Good for cleaning though, I’ll give it that.’

‘No, I mean, do you reckon it’s right to talk to that girl the way you’re talking to her.’

The nurse pointed testily at the bed. Tubby climbed in, sat up, and the nurse set about tucking in the bedclothes.

‘I’m just telling it like it is. I’m not one to beat around the bush or take pity. Pity’s the worst. Drown everyone in pity and nothing will ever get done. It’s no use to any patient, no matter what state they’re in. Besides, I’ve every right to speak my mind, especially when I’m speaking the truth.’

‘No, that’s not what you’re doing at all,’ said Vandersteen. ‘You’re shooting your mouth off so you can feel better about yourself. There’s the truth for you, scraggy bag of bones that you are.’

Her words hung in the air. The grouchy nurse narrowed her eyes. ‘Takes one to know one.’

‘Van Veen,’ said Vandersteen. ‘Anything to say for yourself?’

The nurse was tucking Tubby in way too tight.

‘Uh… yes,’ I said. ‘What you just said… I agree.’

‘I’m going to rise above this,’ said the nurse. ‘And not say another word.’

She thrust Tubby forward, shook her pillow, and pushed her back against it. Then she marched out of the room. Tubby hung her head. I picked up my notepad. Vandersteen put down her magazine.

‘Listen up, you two,’ she said. ‘That’s not how things are going to work around here.’

I counted the lines on the page in front of me. As a kid, back on the island, I used to count the boards that lined the wall of our holiday cottage whenever there was an awkward moment. ‘This isn’t the house of straw, it’s the house of sticks,’ my father used to say. At that point my mother usually reminded him it wasn’t a house of bricks either. There were twenty-three boards on the wall where the fireplace was, the wall opposite the settee: eleven up to the window, four short ones under the window, and then another eight. I counted them over and over again. The answer was always the same. When it was dark, we closed the shutters. As a kid that was my idea of cosy.

‘Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not going to be the one to stand up for everybody. Tubs, you need to find a way to shut a witch like that up. You can’t just stand there and nod while she hurls insults at you.’

Tubby sighed.

‘Every word she said was about her, not about you. You understand that, don’t you, love?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s true.’

‘Well if it isn’t Van Veen, back from the dead,’ Vandersteen snapped. ‘Do you hear what I’m saying, Tubs?’

Tubby nodded.

‘We have to look out for one another,’ said Vandersteen.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

I felt ashamed. Vandersteen went back to her gossip mag. I picked up my pencil and looked at the two words I’d committed to paper. I’d crossed out Dear and then written Dear again above it. After that I’d crossed out Nelis. Maybe I’d be better off watching TV. Dear, I don’t know if you know how I’m doing but things are looking up, I wrote. I looked at the words, tore off the page, crumpled it into a ball, and fired it at the wastepaper basket. Hole in one. I looked up. No one had seen. Tubby had closed her eyes again.

‘Hole in one?’ asked Vandersteen, without taking her eyes off her magazine.

‘Yup,’ I said proudly.

I turned my attention to the empty lines on the page, fourteen in all. Later on, I’d count the pages. There were two hundred, including the one in the wastepaper basket. The copper out in the corridor went into convulsions, coughing long and deep.

In the evening we watched TV. The only television in the room hung between the two big windows, directly above Vandersteen’s head. If she knelt on her bed she could turn it on. Vandersteen was an aficionado. She rolled her bedclothes to the foot of her bed, propped her pillow up against them, and plopped herself down.

‘Aah,’ she said. ‘Welcome to the TV suite.’

The theme tune to the daily showbiz news round-up bounced across the room. It was Vandersteen’s favourite. She sipped at her tumbler of water as if it was a glass of Chartreuse.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘There she is. Mariska Kampschreur. You must’ve heard of her?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

We didn’t have a TV on the houseboat, but everyone had heard of Mariska Kampschreur. A few years back she had abandoned serious journalism to become the face of early-evening light entertainment. Our newspaper had accused her of selling out for the big bucks. I’d told Nelis I understood where she was coming from, that there comes a time when it’s all about paying that big fat mortgage, but I was really only saying it to wind him up. She should’ve got herself a smaller house, that’s what I really thought about Mariska Kampschreur and her career move. Nelis said you could never take anyone seriously once they had sold their soul to the devil. I said it made sense to me. Of course, I didn’t know then what I know now.

I watched along with Vandersteen. Kampschreur had a stiff blonde hairdo, like one of those Playmobil figures. The longer I watched, the more it struck me that she was really enjoying herself. A new item was just getting started. A tall man had pulled up a chair to talk about a pop starlet and her nightmare nose job. Vandersteen clamped her tumbler between her spindly legs and clapped her hands with glee.

‘Pride and vanity,’ she nattered. ‘Pride and vanity. But they can work miracles nowadays, you know. Bloody miracles. She’ll be back next week with a brand-new nose, just wait and see. Another chance to plug her new album.’

Tubby was watching, too, the skin on her face shining. The fire had consumed part of her nose and ears. She was wearing a white cap, so I couldn’t tell if she still had hair. The shiny red skin continued down her neck and disappeared under her nightgown. She tossed and turned wildly in her dreams, but during our first days together in that room she didn’t utter a sound. Her hands lay in her lap. They seemed relatively unscathed and she always had them folded, as if she was sitting in a church pew. In spite of her silence, I could see she was a smart girl, the same way you can tell the bright kids from the thick kids before they can even talk. It’s the look in their eyes. Nelis once said that’s where it all went wrong with us humans: as soon as we started talking, we stopped being part of our surroundings. I loved him so much when he came out with things like that. Tubby’s mouth merged into tough red skin that pulled her lips so tight it seemed to be an effort for her to close them. When I looked closer, I noticed her lips were moving slightly. She seemed to be murmuring to herself.

‘The paparazzi hounded Mariska for ages, snapping away like mad,’ said Vandersteen.

Tubby’s lips suddenly stopped moving, and I quickly turned to look at the TV again. A man with a magic marker was drawing a line on a woman’s face.

‘They could cut and paste all they wanted, but they never got a juicy story out of her. Not a sausage. She has two dogs and a successful media company. That’s yer lot. No husband, no wife, nada. I reckon she’s asexual, like that Cliff Richards fella. Convenient, if you ask me. Spares you all kinds of trouble.’

The final credits raced across the screen. Vandersteen turned around and asked if we wanted to watch anything else. I shook my head. She clicked off the TV and, with much flapping of blankets and sheets, made her way from the TV suite back to the bedroom.

‘What a woman,’ she sighed as she settled back against her pillows. ‘I’d marry her in a heartbeat. This minute. Today.’

‘Who?’ I said. ‘Mariska what’s-her-face?’

Vandersteen nodded.

‘Give me a strong woman any day. I’ve never been able to live with a man. Believe me, I’ve tried. I was born in the Stone Age, after all. But I’m too much of a handful for them.’

She glanced out the window.

‘That said, I’d probably have to morph into a pooch to stand a chance with Mariska.’

‘It takes all sorts,’ I said.

‘Have you got a husband?’ asked Vandersteen.

I didn’t reply.

‘No need to act all la-di-da with that notepad of yours. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve barely written two words.’

‘No, I don’t have a husband,’ I said. ‘You?’

‘Wife,’ said Vandersteen.

‘Can’t say I’ve seen her around,’ I said.

‘I had a wife,’ said Vandersteen.

‘Oh,’ I said.

Silence. Tubby breathed steadily through her nose, in out, in out, and Vandersteen flicked through her magazines. I thought about what I should do. I had plenty of time for pondering, but there was no sign of a conclusion. I thought a lot about home, about our houseboat in the docks at the edge of town. About Nelis. His hands, his eyes, the way he spoke, the way he drank his coffee. Every time he made a fresh pot he used to note the time and leave the note by the coffee machine. Fresh coffee was the only law in our home. ‘Coffee’s a religion,’ he once said. With him around, everything felt warm and cosy. I know I’ll never get him back, of course I do, but looking back now I’d give anything to undo what happened. Even though I’d have no idea where to begin. Perhaps as far back as the island. But here I was, lying in a hospital room under police guard and thinking about what I should do. One idea throbbed in my head all day, like a migraine: I’ve got to get out of here.

‘Beans, spuds, and fish, our favourite Friday dish,’ sang Vandersteen. It was lunch, our one hot meal of the day. ‘No visitors for you two, either, then?’

She tilted her head and peered at me through her reading glasses. I poked my fork at the battered fish that had fallen to pieces on my plate.

‘It’s Thursday,’ I said.

‘Yeah, yeah, they’re not that strict in these parts,’ said Vandersteen. ‘No cards? No one had a card yet? Tubs? You neither? A young thing like you.’

Vandersteen shook her head.

‘It’s a regular vale of tears around here.’

I speared a spud and followed it up with a flake or two of fish and a bean. I took a look at my forkful and shoved it into my mouth. Nelis said I had a dyslexic heart, which always made me think of the girl who sat next to me in primary school. She was dyslexic, and annoying with it. I suppose the fact that I can’t remember her name even though I sat beside her all those years proves Nelis’s point.

‘I know exactly what makes you tick,’ he told me once. ‘But you can’t read me.’

He had a point there, too.

I was cycling home, shortly after dark, pedalling over the dyke all the way to the docks. Nothing beats a summer bike ride in the cool of the evening. I’d been to a hunting trade fair in Belgium and I’d been planning to spend the night in a hotel, but the fair hadn’t been up to much, so I’d taken a late train home instead. Our houseboat was moored at the industrial docks, the cheapest spot in town. There was an abattoir right next door, pigs mostly. An old-fashioned slaughterhouse built beyond the city limits and then gradually swallowed up by urban expansion, till now it lay just outside the centre. If you could sketch a smell, I’d be able to draw the smell of the slaughterhouse for you now with my eyes closed: feed silos mixed with the odour of an old fridge left unplugged with the door closed for a very long time. Our neighbour called the council every time he caught a whiff of offal, which was between two and six times a day, depending on the wind. I swooped from the dyke down into the docks with my head in the breeze. Almost home, I thought. A lorry was chuntering away outside the abattoir’s big warehouse door, a cheery family of pigs emblazoned on the side. Porkers in the pink of health.

It was a beautiful evening. With the abattoir behind me, there was only our neighbour’s barge to cycle past. He always left a string of coloured fairy lights on in the summer, even when he was on holiday. The warm glow of homecoming began when I laid eyes on them. I braked at the gangplank to our boat, that old floating wooden bungalow of ours, and chained my bike to the lamppost. It was quiet. No coots, no pigs, no yelling from the drunks who liked to loll about on the bench at the end of the dyke. Not a sound. On the boat, the lights were out.

That was odd.

The car was parked outside, as usual. Nelis’s bike was there, too, chained to the mailbox. Next door’s fairy lights swayed in the breeze. I was filled with longing for my own bed. Curling up in your own bed—come to think of it, that even trumps a summer-evening bike ride.

I walked up the gangplank. I couldn’t remember Nelis saying he had anything on that evening, but wherever he’d gone, he must have decided to go on foot. I reached for my keys, opened the front door, dropped my bag in the hall, and went into the living room. Then I heard something. It came from the other side of the boat. He’s ill, I thought. There’s something wrong. I walked over to the bedroom. The door was ajar and the neighbour’s lights cast dim colours on the bed. The curtains were open—I liked them open, Nelis didn’t. Just as I was about to enter the room, I realized there was someone else in bed with him. In the glow of the fairy lights I saw Nelis’s pale backside heaving up and down. I jumped. Without making a sound, I stepped back into the hall.

A strange kind of thrill flared up inside me.

The thought came a fraction of a second later: I knew it. I knew it all along. He doesn’t love me. And now he’s going to pay for that feeling I’ve had my whole life, the feeling that there’s something wrong. For a moment I was grateful. Relieved. I saw a way out, a fleeting glimpse of another life: the apartment I’d rent, my birds in every room, the neighbourhood I’d live in, never having to make allowances for someone else. Alone, alone at last.

I stood there in the hall, thinking, and heard his deep voice murmuring in the background like a mantra. I only heard her for a second—a solitary whimper, that was all. Then the pain came flooding in. The rejection. I turned and walked away, hitched my bag over my shoulder, opened the front door, trod quietly over the gangplank to my bike, and cycled to the far side of the abattoir. I called him, left a message, and within ten minutes the windows on the boat lit up. A shadow ran down the gangplank and disappeared in the direction of the dyke.

I cycled home in slow motion. With much clunking and rattling, I chained my bike to the mailbox.

‘Not much fun to be had?’ Nelis called from the doorway.

‘Meh,’ I said. ‘I just felt like coming home.’

‘I’m glad,’ he said.

‘Me too,’ I said.

You prick, I thought, but I said nothing. I sat down on the couch and asked if there was any coffee going. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve already rinsed out the pot.’

Then he went to bed. I don’t know what happens to a person when they imagine no one can see them, like me at that moment, when no one knew that I knew what I knew. I was sure I’d have no trouble acting as if nothing had happened. I didn’t have a plan. There are times when I wish I was smarter. Maybe in my next life.

Funny thing is, that next life is now.

I had it all under control. I’ll bide my time, I thought. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. It’s an interesting feeling when you start acting your own life. He gave a sterling performance, too, mind you. Never let anything slip. But I was one step ahead. I knew about him, and I knew he didn’t know that I knew. It came naturally, the acting. Like slipping into an old pair of shoes I hadn’t worn for a while. Your feet recognize the lumps and hollows in the insoles. I didn’t know exactly how, but I was going to throw it in his face, and I was relishing the prospect. A while back we had planned a party for his birthday. I’m not one for throwing parties, but he was turning forty, so I’d surprised him and said it was fine by me if he invited everyone around to celebrate.

I had meant it.

He was so happy.

‘So you had a wife?’ I asked Vandersteen.

‘You betcha,’ said Vandersteen. ‘I was married to Angelique. But we split up. Only a month ago. Officially.’

Vandersteen was perched on her bed. Her twiggy legs dangled over the edge, swinging to and fro under pale, bony knees. Tubby stared into space.

‘It wasn’t what you’d call a success,’ said Vandersteen. ‘Well, put it this way, I thought it was a success, but after a while she’d had enough of me.’

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Were you a handful?’

‘I would appear to be a rather restless individual.’

Outside, the sun broke through a heavy rain cloud. A pigeon landed on the windowsill. Vandersteen slid off the bed and tapped the window.

‘Hello, my little dove,’ she said.

The pigeon flew off.

‘Flying rats,’ she muttered.

‘Pigeons are actually very smart,’ I informed her.

I must have been around ten. I was with my father, and we were watching the chickens that scratched around the edge of the woods near our holiday cottage. My father explained that if you kept chickens in a run, you had to clip their wings or they’d start to fly. The wings of our woodland chickens weren’t yet long enough to allow them to fly. Or perhaps they’d just forgotten how.

‘It doesn’t hurt when you clip them,’ my father said. ‘It’s like us getting our hair cut.’

‘Does that mean chickens would fly around, otherwise?’ I asked.

My father thought for a while, then patted me gently on the head. A cock crowed somewhere in among the trees.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘If they flap like mad, they can just about clear a fence, and even then they look awkward. They’re not like geese. They don’t want to head south in winter.’

I pictured a flock of chickens high in sky.

Taxidermy is my first love. Birds, especially. On our houseboat I set aside a room as a workshop for my animals. Occasionally I had to rent extra workspace, like the time when that moose head wouldn’t fit through the front door. I’m not fussy—for money I’ll stuff anything, but left to my own devices it would always be birds. Chickens are my favourite. There’s something simple and honest about them. My husband gave me that warm, cosy feeling, and for whatever reason, so did my birds. For me there was nothing finer than coming home, walking into my room, and flopping down in an armchair with the ladies and gents of the avian world looking down from the walls around me. At the far end of the room stood my workbench and a desk for my computer. Ideally I’d have had separate rooms: a showroom, a workshop, and an office, but Nelis had banned my feathered family from the rest of the boat. I can understand that. You can’t share everything. Perhaps that’s what did for us in the end.

‘I’m not crazy,’ said Vandersteen. ‘I make a good partner. When I stand by someone, I stand by them forever. Whether they still want me by their side or not. One day I found two empty trunks in the hall, and a note that said she was catching a train to her mother’s and taking the kids with her. She gave me a week to pack my things. She hadn’t been gone long—I could tell because she’d left that day’s post on the sideboard. I ran outside to see if I could catch sight of her. Jesus, it must have been minus ten out there. Did I leave? Are you kidding? I wasn’t about to wander off into the wilderness just like that. She’ll miss me, I thought, and by the time she comes back it’ll all be okay.’

‘You’ve got kids?’

‘We’ve got kids.’

‘How many?’

‘Two.’

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Vandersteen.

‘What are their names?’

Vandersteen looked out the window and bit her fingernail.

‘God, I could do with a ciggie,’ she said.

She breathed against the windowpane and drew a cock and balls in the little patch of condensation.

‘When Angelique came back she said I made the kids nervous,’ said Vandersteen. ‘Who knows, maybe it was true. And so I left, after all. But I still believe we could have sorted things out between us, given half a chance.’

She went over and sat back down on her bed.

‘I think.’

‘Hmmmm,’ I said.

‘Pffff,’ she sighed. ‘Women. You’re better off keeping chickens. Or pigeons, for that matter.’

I thought of Nelis. I imagined leaving two trunks at the front door for him, and how, once he’d gone, I could have spread my birds all around the boat and sat there gazing contentedly over the water at the coots paddling by in the harbour, parping away like party tooters.

‘Are you still allowed to see the kids?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Vandersteen.

She puffed out her cheeks and let the air slowly escape.

‘Ten years we’d been together. I wanted to talk but she wouldn’t give an inch. Maybe I’d become a bit of an old biddy. I don’t know. I spent a lot of time at home. But to slam the door shut like that… ’

‘Kids have short memories.’

‘I haven’t seen them for months. Not since winter.’

‘Have you been in here all that time?’ I asked.

‘Eh… no, a few things have happened in the meantime. But if she called me up and said, “Come on home, love,” I’d be there like a shot.’

‘Unless Mariska Kampschreur calls you up first,’ I said.

Vandersteen laughed.

‘Yep, that would be a game-changer, all right.’

‘I can picture it now, picking up the phone and hearing that deep womanly voice and those mangy little mutts of hers yapping away in the background. “Could I speak to Vandersteen please?”’

‘And then I come to the phone,’ said Vandersteen.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You come a-running and grab the receiver off me and say: “It’s me, it’s me!” And then that sultry voice says… ‘I do my best Dietrich. ‘“Vandersteen, honey lamb, will you marry me?”’

‘Aahh, wouldn’t that be grand… ’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s one wedding I wouldn’t want to miss.’

‘Well then, we’ll need to make sure it happens.’

For a moment we sat there, chuckling. For a moment there was only that. Vandersteen reached for the fresh pile of outdated magazines brought in by the loud nurse that morning.

‘I don’t have anyone, either,’ I said. ‘Not anymore.’

Vandersteen’s hand hovered in mid-air above her bedside table.

‘So we’re there now, are we?’ she said.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘At the point where we finally get to talk about you?’

I shrugged.

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘I’ve been dying of curiosity over here,’ said Vandersteen.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Are your parents still alive?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re dead.’

‘Oh,’ said Vandersteen. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘It’s not like I ever saw them much.’

‘Brothers? Sisters?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Friends?’

‘I’m not really one for friends,’ I said.

‘All alone,’ said Vandersteen.

‘Pretty much,’ I said.

‘What a shame. A fine bunch of women like us. Yes, you too, Tubs. I mean, I’m an old bag, but the two of you… ’

‘I reckon we’re both glad to have you around,’ I said.

‘Yeah, okay, as old bags go, I’m a corker. Don’t look a day over two hundred. But still. If I’d died at home it would’ve been ten years before they found me, a length of parchment in an armchair next to the radiator. Under the standard lamp, still clutching a magazine. Maybe not such a bad way to go.’

‘I’d sign up for that,’ I said.

Vandersteen nodded.

‘What about your visitors, Tubs?’ asked Vandersteen.

Tubby gave a cautious shrug.

‘Not expecting anyone? Our personal bodyguard at the door isn’t sitting there for the good of his health.’

Vandersteen’s voice sounded much gentler than normal.

‘It’s almost enough to make you think that someone around here is expecting someone to turn up, eh?’

Tubby shook her head sadly. A drop of water tapped onto her sheet, a big fat tear. Vandersteen slid off her bed, jumped up next to Tubby, and put her arm around her—a scrawny little arm around Tubby’s broad shoulders. Vandersteen hummed a little tune. Tubby sighed again, a very deep sigh this time, and carefully rested her cheek on Vandersteen’s head. They sat there for a long while. There are times when you can sense that other people are feeling the same thing you are. We shared the silence. I reached for my notepad, and this time I didn’t count the lines on the page or the tiles above the washbasin. In this moment everything seemed to fall into place, everything we had been through, how alone we all were. Everything I had done, everything that had happened to the other two, even though at that point I didn’t know the details. And to be honest, now that I think about it, the details hardly matter anymore.

It happened that night. After the three of us had switched off our lamps and all we could see were clouds drifting across the moon, Tubby decided to talk.

‘Okay,’ she said softly.

Vandersteen and I both sat up at once. I could make out Tubby’s silhouette against the shadows that played across the curtain.

‘Okay,’ she said again, even more softly this time.

‘Lo,’ said Vandersteen. ‘It speaks.’

I hissed at Vandersteen to be quiet.

‘My name’s Anna, too,’ she said.

Her voice was thin.

‘And it has a beautiful name into the bargain,’ said Vandersteen.

‘Believe it or not, I’m a right old chatterbox,’ Anna whispered sadly.

‘That’s fine, love,’ said Vandersteen. ‘Welcome here among us. We’ve missed you.’

I nodded, though I knew no one else could see.

The next day they removed my drain, and for the first time I was able to go to the toilet by myself. I wanted to look in the mirror, but all the mirrors had been taken down. For the first time in ages I could sit and do my business without someone hearing me, or having to slide a bedpan under me. I sat on the toilet with my chin in my hands, listening to Vandersteen singing softly to herself as she sat in bed. Now it was only a matter of time before I would be transferred. Criminal proceedings were already underway, and soon I’d be well enough for a prison cell. I no longer wanted to be cooped up all by myself. There was something about being with the other two that made me want to stay.