The Reunion

Heating on, radio on, a bag of liquorice on the seat next to me, I drive out of the abandoned carpark, past the woods, the Dark Dunes, towards the town centre.

Den Helder is not a comforting sight in the rain. Neither is Amsterdam, but at least Amsterdam doesn’t shut down in the winter. Den Helder looks like a city where the air-raid sirens have just gone off. I haven’t been back since my parents moved to Spain five years ago.

I love cities with a soul, with a historic centre. But the only thing old about Den Helder are the people who live there. All the young people go to Alkmaar and Amsterdam when they leave school. The only people left are sailors and tourists taking the boat to Texel.

I drive along the Middenweg towards my old school. When I reach it, the school grounds are almost empty. A small group of students are defying the drizzle to get a fix of nicotine that will help them through the day.

Once around the school and then along the same route I used to ride home, past the military camp towards the Lange Vliet. The cross wind can’t touch me now. In the corner of my eye I can see the bike path.

Isabel lived in the same village as me. We didn’t ride home together that day, but she must have taken the Lange Vliet route. I saw her ride out of the school grounds. I’d deliberately lingered before leaving. If I’d ridden after her, nothing might have happened.

I accelerate and drive at the speed limit along the Lange Vliet. At Juliana Village I take the first left onto the motorway. As I drive along the canal I change into fifth and turn up the radio.

Out of here. Back to Amsterdam.

I sing along at the top of my voice to the chart hits blaring out of the radio and fish one piece of liquorice after the other out of the bag next to me. Only when Alkmaar is behind me do I return to the present. I think about my work. The Bank. I have to go back on Monday. It’s Thursday today, I still have three days to myself. Even though I don’t want to go back to work, I think it will be good for me. I’ve been home alone for too long, watching unexpected and incomprehensible images passing like dreams before my eyes. I’m starting back on a trial basis—mornings only, to see how I feel.

That’s what the doctor ordered, after all.

2 (#ulink_1b8eaff6-787d-549e-9b5b-93cd7432c0e4)

There’s no cake to celebrate my return, no banners in the office. Not that I was expecting them. Well, maybe a little. As I stand in the doorway, breathing heavily after walking up the stairs, it takes a while for my colleagues to notice me. I take in all of the changes: my impounded desk, the relaxed way in which my replacement sits talking to my colleagues, the many new faces. It feels like I’m coming to be interviewed for my own job.

I could have taken the lift of course, but my doctor says I should take the stairs more often. He doesn’t know I work on the ninth floor.

Then I’m spotted and my workmates come over to greet me. I scan their faces, searching for the one person I can’t see.

‘Sabine! How you doing?’

‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’

‘Brace yourself. It’s a mad house here.’

‘How are you? You look so well.’

I haven’t seen any of them all the time I’ve been off sick, except for Jeanine.

RenÉe comes up with a plastic cup of coffee in her hand. ‘Hello Sabine,’ she says. ‘Everything all right?’

I nod, still looking at my desk.

‘Let me introduce you to your replacement, Margot.’ She follows my gaze. ‘She’s been filling in for you all this time. She’ll stay on until you’re back full-time.’

I walk towards my old desk but RenÉe stops me. ‘There’s still a free desk at the back, Sabine. Margot’s been working here so long now, it would be silly to make her move.’

I decide that making a scene over something so trivial as a desk is not the best start to my first day back. My new desk is in the furthest corner of the office far away from the others. My eyes remain fixed on the desk I used to face.

‘Where’s Jeanine?’ I ask, but just then the printer begins to rattle.

It’s just a desk. Breathe in, breathe out.

Something has changed. The atmosphere is different. Any interest in my return has evaporated. I’d expected some catch up chats, particularly with Jeanine, but there is only empty space around me.

Everyone is busy again and I sit in my corner. I take a pile of letters from the mail tray and say to no one in particular, ‘Where is Jeanine? Is she on holiday?’

‘Jeanine left last month,’ RenÉe says, without looking up from her computer. ‘Zinzy has replaced her. You’ll meet her later in the week, she’s having a couple of days off.’

‘Jeanine’s left?’ I’m dumbfounded. ‘I had no idea.’

‘There are other changes you don’t know about,’ says RenÉe, her eyes still fixed on her computer.

‘Such as?’ I ask.

She turns towards me. ‘In January, Walter promoted me to head of the department.’

We stare at each other.

‘There’s no such position.’

‘Someone had to pick up the pieces.’

RenÉe turns back to her screen.

So much is going on in my head that I don’t know what to say. The morning stretches out endlessly before me. I resist the impulse to call Jeanine. Why didn’t she tell me she’d resigned?

I stare out of the window until I notice that RenÉe is watching me. She keeps on looking until I’m hunched over the mail.

Welcome back, Sabine.

The first time I came to The Bank’s head office, I was impressed. It has an imposing entrance in a beautiful park and, when I walked through the revolving doors into a world of space and marble, I felt myself shrivelling into insignificance.

But I liked it. The stylish suits and jackets around me turned out to be worn by very normal people. Remembering my mother’s advice that I would get more out of a few expensive good quality basics than a drawer full of bargains, I bought a new wardrobe. Tailored jackets, knee-length skirts and dark tights became my standard uniform. This was how I entered the imposing lobby every day—disguised.

Working for a multinational is not the sort of work I aspired to. I trained as a Dutch and French teacher, but it was difficult to find a school I wanted to teach at—and I gave up applying for jobs pretty quickly. During placement I’d taught classes full of rebellious teenagers and it had been dreadful.

Jeanine and I joined The Bank at the same time, when they had just set up a new trust fund. The job itself didn’t excite me. It had sounded great: administrator/office support, good communication skills and a broad knowledge of languages needed.

But I needn’t have taken out a student loan to say, ‘Please hold the line’, and replenish the supply of glue sticks. That’s probably what they meant by ‘flexibility’ in the job description.

But there was a good atmosphere in the office. Jeanine and I gossiped about the execs we were working for, we reorganised the filing system and picked up each other’s telephones when one of us wanted to nip out to the shops for half an hour.

I was independent and I had a job. My new life had begun.

After a while, we were really busy. The wave of business managers hired to work on the trust fund grew and we could barely keep up with the work. We needed more people, and fast.

Jeanine and I presided over the interviews and that’s how RenÉe came to work with us. She was good at her job, but the atmosphere changed almost immediately. She knew how things should be run. RenÉe felt that our department didn’t come up to scratch and nor did Jeanine or I. She had no truck with extended lunch breaks. Of course she was right, but we had no truck with the fact that she had a personal meeting with Walter behind closed doors to air her complaints. Walter was pleased with RenÉe, she was a worthy addition to the Trust.

‘And to think that we hired her ourselves,’ said Jeanine.