Читать книгу The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows - Marnie Riches - Страница 14

A glance into the garden confirmed that the children were both playing happily. Clambering onto the small plastic climbing frame. Josh was even helping Lucy to get up the three steps. There they both were, squealing as they slid down the Day-Glo pink slide, then crawled into the space beneath the platform, poking their little heads out of the ‘window’. Good. And the play area was still in shadow, as the morning sun had not yet moved round from the front. No need to apply sunscreen just yet. They were safe. Perfectly safe. He could concentrate. Even if it was only for twenty minutes or so, that would be enough.

Peering down at the architectural drawing of the Wagenaar family’s poky three-bedroomed house, Piet Deenen could see how he could utilise the dead space to the side. Where a washing line currently hung forlornly, he could create an open plan living area. Bring more light into that horrible galley kitchen. Theirs was another poorly designed boxy house on the outermost fringes of Amsterdam. A garden suburb. A post-war poor-man’s utopia, thrown together by shortsighted town-planners in response to a burgeoning population and the need for slum clearance. The Netherlands was now crying out for men like Piet: architects with modest ambitions, an easy-going nature and an affordable rate. Gabi had been so wrong about his earning potential. Fuck London with its cut-throat property- and job-market.

A few clicks on the mouse, and he manipulated his design software to create an extra five feet of usable floor space for Mr and Mrs Wagenaar and their three children. Better.

He drank from his coffee. Scattered crumbs onto his jeans from the appeltaart he had knocked up for him and the kids. Gabi wouldn’t touch anything containing carbs, of course. She was still on the corporate treadmill in her head. Sharp-dressing. 8 a.m. starts, though she no longer needed to keep those ridiculous hours. An hour of exercise every day: disciplined body, disciplined mind. Old habits weren’t dying hard.

Leaning forward, knocking his coffee all over the plans of the existing front elevation, he opened the window.

‘Kids!’ he shouted in his native Dutch. ‘Ten minutes and I’ll bring you out some cake and milk. Okay?’

Delighted squeals from outside. Josh jumping up and down, Lucy not really understanding much beyond cake and milk, no doubt. They waved up at him. All, ‘love you, Paps!’ Sticky juice hands. Dirty knees. Both with flaxen hair just like he had had as a child. But their curls had come from Gabi’s side of the family.

Piet surveyed this perfect domestic scene. Perched atop the Day-Glo pink climbing frame were his very own small people. His family. Here – the middle of nowhere – had to be the safest place in the world to raise children, hadn’t it? Here, they had green space. Privacy. You wouldn’t even know there was a train line running behind the garden. It was a glorious sight. The relocation had been worthwhile. Gabi would come round without water eventually.

Except Josh ruined the perfect snapshot in time, as usual. He started to dangle Lucy by her ankles over the ladder of the climbing frame. Shrieks of excitement from his tiny sibling, quickly turned to anguished screaming.

‘Stop that, Josh! Leave your sister alone. Don’t make me come down there!’

Shit. Bloody kids. Coffee spillage or Lucy: which was the more urgent? Suddenly, he found himself flapping, and ran to the bathroom to get toilet roll. At least he could blot the worst of it.

‘I’m coming down!’ he shouted through the open window.

‘Pappie!’ Cries from Lucy.

Mischievous laughter trilling on the air from Josh.

But then the phone started ring.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Gabi on the other end.

‘Did you put the wash on?’ she asked. Sounded harried.

‘What? Yes. No. Hang on, darling. The kids are going mad in the garden. There’s coffee— I’ve got to …’ Looking out at the precarious scene below, he could see that Josh had released his sister from his tyrannical grip but was now holding the sides of the climbing frame, rocking the plastic tower back and forth. Trying to topple that which was not designed to be toppled.

Gabi’s voice, tinny but insistent down the phone-line. ‘Piet! I told you to put the bloody washing in. The one time your mother actually comes to babysit overnight and there’s no clean bedding.’ Her tone had quickly turned from undisguised mistrust to naked fury.

‘I’ll do it! Darling, I can’t—’

‘Can’t? Can’t? Then how come I manage? I’m sick of it, Piet. You promised me we’d have some time for ourselves. That was the whole damned point, wasn’t it? Better quality of life, you said!’

‘Gab, the kids are—’

‘Did you put Josh’s assessment on the calendar like I told you?’

Piet tore himself away from the window. He turned to the calendar, pinned to a corkboard in his little office, one ear still on the mayhem in the garden. Feeling torn between answering his wife’s demands and monitoring his ebullient charges, he was relieved when it became relatively quiet outside. Little children’s voices chatting nicely, not bellowing. Laughter. This meant the kids were finally behaving, leaving him to focus on dealing with Gabi. ‘Yes. It’s down for 10 a.m. on the 18th.’

‘Of June? You got the right month?’

He felt the prickle of irritation on the back of his neck that he always got that when Gabi started to undermine him. He imagined her, snip, snip, snip at his testicles with the big garden shears. ‘Yes, I got the right fucking month. It says in capital letters, ‘Josh – psychiatric evaluation. 18th of June’. It was all he could do not to shout June down the phone.

‘Did you pay the credit card bill?’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean, no?’

‘Not enough money in the account. Not after the deposit on the car and the first repayment coming out.’

The argument quickly escalated into a slanging match over whether they were going to be cut off by the utilities company or not. As usual. By the time he slammed the phone down on his wife, Piet was exhausted.

He finished mopping the coffee spillage. The drawing was brown and rippled now, like the waves of the North Sea in winter. Damn.

Throwing the soggy tissue into his wastepaper basket, he peered out of the window. Sod Gabi. He would sit outside for a bit with the kids. If he invoiced a few more customers early, chances are, one would pay up before the thirty-day notice and he could settle the overdue gas bill.

Padding down in bare feet to the kitchen – a sleek luxury he had insisted upon if she was to have that ridiculous car they didn’t even need – he sliced up the cake. Piet poured milk into two plastic beakers. One green for Lucy. One yellow for Josh. An orange one for him, so he could join in. Took a tray outside.

The rustle of a late spring breeze in the trees was nothing short of idyllic. A train approached in the distance, although he hardly noticed the sound now, as the Rotterdam to Schiphol service trundled past some several metres below the line of houses – out of view, deep in its purpose-built cutting.

‘Come on, babies. Let’s take some time out.’

Silence.

Had they answered and he hadn’t heard them over the train’s rumble? Setting the tray down, he looked at the climbing frame, expecting to see his children. They weren’t there. Hide and seek, no doubt. Always a favourite. His heart had started to pound. He could feel the blood draining from his face. But that was fine, because they were hiding.

‘Josh! Lucy! Come on out now. Time for a snack.’

No sign of them in the void of the climbing frame. Neither could he see small figures skulking behind the wooden sun-loungers.

‘Not funny, kids! Come out!’

Peering at the bases of the holly bushes, he could see no telltale feet. Crap. The gate! He ran to check the side gate. Had they walked onto the street? No! The side gate was bolted and padlocked.

‘I know where you are, you little rascals!’

It was a simple but mature garden, mainly full of evergreen shrubbery and trees. Holly, laurel, a eucalyptus, cotoneaster, the heavy canopy of three Japanese maples, specimen pine, other stuff he didn’t know the names of. All surrounded by a solid, six-foot-tall wooden fence. They were hiding. He had to calm down. It simply wasn’t possible for them to have disappeared. Only one place could successfully conceal them.

At the far end of the garden was a small weeping birch that cascaded right to the ground, providing the kids with a curtain of green, behind which they could safely hide from view.

Smiling tentatively, Piet crept forward. Preparing to sweep the whippy branches aside to reveal his collaborating toddlers. Grabbed the branches. Hope fading as he realised he could not hear any delighted, anticipatory giggling. Looked for the sandaled feet, mucky knees and brightly coloured shorts in vain. Lifted the canopy suddenly.

‘Gotcha!’

The void by the tree trunk was empty.

In a dizzying vortex of panic, Piet stepped backwards. Tripped on Lucy’s Sesamstraat tricycle, Big Bird staring goggle-eyed into the abyss as he was now.

‘Josh! Lucy!’ he shouted at the top of his voice.

Hands shaking. His breath started to come short. Where was his inhaler? Inside. Maybe they had gone inside.

‘Lucy! Josh! Where are you?’

Found his Ventolin on the worktop. Inhaled sharply. Eyes scanning the kitchen. Back into the garden now. Screaming at the top of his lungs. Frightened tears starting to leak from his eyes.

‘Joshua! Lucy! Where are you?’

He fell to his knees as the bottom dropped out of his world. The garden was empty. His children were gone.