‘Oh, dear,’ Clara says, ‘Greta is really going to hate me now.’
Pieter runs a finger along her bare arm. ‘I’m starting to get a little jealous of your obsession with Greta. Are you certain that seducing me wasn’t just a way of getting to her?’
‘Um,’ Clara pretends to consider it. ‘Er … yes, quite certain.’
‘Then I have absolutely no idea what your ulterior motive is. You’ve got me stumped.’
Clara turns onto her side, letting the sheet slip from her shoulders. ‘Is it not possible that I just wanted you?’
Pieter shakes his head. ‘You’re saying that I was the final objective in your plan? No, I’m afraid I can’t possibly believe that. You are, quite simply, the worst liar I’ve ever met.’
Clara casts her eye around the bedroom. Happily, like every other room in the house, every inch of its floor is completely covered with piles of papers. ‘I get the feeling that you haven’t had that many liars – or, indeed, honest people – in this room at all …’
Pieter smiles. ‘Gosh, you women really do have your extra senses, don’t you?’
Clara studies him. ‘Have you ever been in love?’
‘Well … yes, I have actually. Perhaps not in the way of Marthe and Otto, but yes, in my own way, I have.’
Clara waits.
‘A woman lived in this room – well, in the whole house, of course – for about five years,’ he continues, suddenly sounding sorrowful. ‘She left when I was thirty-five.’
‘Did she leave you because she kept slipping over all your papers?’ Clara says, attempting to lighten the mood. ‘Did she break her leg one too many times?’
Pieter gives her a half-smile. ‘Actually, I was very tidy back then, bordering on fastidious, in fact. I only allowed myself to get like this afterwards, after I knew she wouldn’t be coming back, and after I knew no one would be coming to replace her. Then I filled the spaces with my papers and …’ He shrugs.
‘So,’ Clara ventures, fiddling with the edge of the sheet. ‘How did you know … How did you know that you wouldn’t, that no one would come to replace her?’
Pieter shrugs and, again, Clara waits.
‘She left because she wanted a child,’ he says at last. ‘And I couldn’t give her one. Well, no, not couldn’t – although perhaps I couldn’t, I don’t know, we never tried – but because I wouldn’t, because I didn’t want one.’
‘So she left?’
‘She really wanted a baby. She hoped I’d change my mind. She waited five years to see if I might. And then, when I didn’t – as I’d always, regretfully, promised her I wouldn’t – she, regretfully, left. She was four years older than I was, so she didn’t have endless amounts of time to find another man, one who wanted what she wanted.’
‘And did she? Did she find him? Did she have her baby?’
Pieter smiles. ‘Yes, she did. She came to visit me once, over a decade ago. She showed me her little boy. He was very sweet, actually. Though, of course, I couldn’t permit him to enter the house. I might have found him less so, after he ran rampage over my letters. Lena was a little horrified at the sight of the house, I think. If she’d had any doubts that she’d done the right thing, when she turned up on my doorstep, that visit confirmed that she had. I’m sure she was even happier when she left than when she arrived.’
‘And, why didn’t you want one?’
‘I don’t know … During our final year it was all Lena wanted – to understand why I didn’t want it. At least, that’s what she said. I think she was just hoping, amid all the questions, all the rationalising, that I would change my mind.’
‘And you didn’t?’ Clara asks. ‘You never thought of giving her a baby anyway, because she wanted one, because you loved her?’
Pieter sighs. ‘Of course I thought of it. I’d have given her a cat, even though I’m allergic. I’d have given her a dozen cats. Hell, I’d have given her a horse or an elephant, but not a baby. For a child to grow up with an unwilling father, that’s a pain I wouldn’t inflict on anyone.’
Clara catches his eye. ‘You knew it yourself?’
He nods. ‘After what he went through in the camps, my father could only survive, he had nothing left for anyone else. But, still he got married and had children because that’s what everyone did then. He was never a father to me, though, not in any sense of the word.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Clara shifts closer and kisses him. At first it’s tentative, gentle, soft, then Pieter presses his body against hers, slips his fingers though her hair and pulls her close, and the kiss is deep and passionate and long.
‘You’re very good,’ he says softly, when they finally separate.
‘Why, thank you.’
‘Well, yes, at that, of course.’ He smiles. ‘But, I actually meant, at getting me to talk about myself. And I don’t believe you’ve revealed one single thing about yourself yet. You never finished telling me about the pen your grandfather made for you.’
‘Okay.’ Clara nods. ‘Fair point. But I only mentioned it because of what you said about not writing letters.’
‘What did I say?’ Pieter asks. ‘Your kisses really are that good, I’ve completely forgotten anything and everything that went before them.’
Clara grins. ‘You said that you haven’t written a letter because you want to be as witty as Austen, as passionate as Anaïs Nin and—’
‘Ah, yes, my low expectations,’ Pieter agrees. ‘It’s all coming back to me now.’
‘Well, when I was a little girl my grandfather made me a pen and—’
‘I still can’t believe that,’ he interrupts, ‘that the great Lucas Janssen is – was – your grandfather and that he made you your very own pen.’
Clara pokes Pieter gently in his arm. ‘Hey, do you want to hear this story, or not?’
He grins. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll shut up. Tell me, please.’
‘Okay. Anyway, he gave it to me on my thirteenth birthday and told me that, one day, when I was ready, I’d write a great novel with it.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘He told me that he’d seen it … in my spirit, on the day I was born … that it was my destiny.’
‘Fok.’
Clara nods. ‘Exactly. No pressure, right?’
He smiles. ‘Ah, well, don’t worry, you young people do everything on computers now, don’t you? So you can just use the pen to write shopping lists. That’ll take the pressure off.’
‘So, did the power of my kisses also cause you to forget that I own a stationery shop?’ Clara says. ‘Along with the fact that I have never and will never own a computer.’
‘Yes,’ Pieter says. ‘In my defence, those are some quite mind-blowing kisses. It’s lucky you won’t be staying long, or I’d soon forget my own name.’
Clara’s breath catches in her throat. ‘Won’t I?’
Pieter frowns. ‘I didn’t mean … I only thought – you’ve got to get back to your shop, haven’t you? I just assumed …’
‘What? That this was a one-night stand?’ Clara sits up, pulling the sheet with her to cover herself, hurt by the assumption, even though she hadn’t intended to spend longer than one night with him in the first place.
Pieter shrugs softly. ‘No, I didn’t think about it like that – truly, I never even believed that you would ever, ever end up in my bed. It is some kind of miracle, really. But I know you’re only visiting, because of the letters, and I know that you have to go home, I imagine, sometime soon …’
Clara sniffs. ‘Yeah, okay, I know. Sorry. I just didn’t want you to think I was some sort of slut or something.’
Pieter laughs. ‘No danger of that.’
‘Well, good.’
Pieter eyes her. ‘Is this a ploy? An elaborately clever way of, once more, avoiding telling me anything about yourself?’
Clara gives him a guilty smile. ‘Perhaps. Well, anyway … As I was saying … the point is, I’ve never written anything longer than a letter. I’ve planned plenty of books and begun quite a few, but I’ve never even finished a first chapter. And it’s been twenty years now’ – she gives him a small, self-deprecating smile – ‘so I’m starting to think my grandfather may have made a mistake.’
Pieter considers this. ‘Or, perhaps … if you took the pressure off yourself, if you didn’t try so hard – if you weren’t trying to write a “great” novel, but just began with an “okay” one, or a really bad one, just for the sake of finishing it. Then you might find it a lot easier, perhaps …?’
‘Ah,’ Clara says. ‘Well, that is good advice. And I might be able to take you more seriously if you had’ – she raises an eyebrow at him – ‘I don’t know, written a novel yourself, or even a single tiny little letter.’
‘Oo, that’s fighting dirty,’ Pieter says, pulling her forward so she falls on top of him. ‘And, besides, whoever let an insignificant thing like lack of experience get in the way of giving advice?’ He kisses her neck. ‘You’re extremely beautiful, you know. Knockout beautiful, stop-and-stare-in-the-street beautiful …’
Clara grins. ‘Is that how you get out of all sticky situations? Via the use of hyperbolic compliments?’
Pieter kisses her again, smiling. ‘Is it working?’
‘Not yet,’ Clara says. ‘But perhaps you should just keep going until it does …’
Clara is strolling along a cobbled street, on her way back to her B&B, when her phone rings. Her first thought is of Pieter. She smiles.
‘Miss Cohen?’
Clara recognises the voice of the spidery woman instantly. She stops walking. ‘Yes?’
‘This is Mrs de Groot, from the—’
‘Yes, I remember, is everything okay? Did you find something after all?’
‘As a matter of fact, we did.’
Clara wants to ask what, but her breath is trapped in her throat.
‘A colleague of mine overheard you, when you were asking, somewhat loudly, about the details of your relative. Anyway, he thought to search another archive and he found him.’
‘He did, really?!’
‘Yes. Would you like me to tell you over the phone, or would you prefer to come in?’
‘No, no, please. I’d like to know now.’
‘All right.’ Clara hears the rustling of papers. ‘Otto Josef Garritt van Dijk died in Herzogenbusch in 1943.’
‘I’m sorry, where is that?’ Clara says. ‘In the Netherlands?’
‘Yes.’ Mrs de Groot takes a short, sharp breath. ‘It was a concentration camp, Miss Cohen, in Vught. Over 30,000 people were interned there, I believe, many were transferred to other camps such as Auschwitz. But your relative died there, in December of 1943. Fortunately, if one can use such a word in this instance, the Nazis were very good at keeping records.’
Clara’s eyes fill. ‘But he would have been just a baby, only a few years …’
‘Well,’ the woman’s voice is soft now, ‘of course many children perished in the camps. But he wasn’t a child, he was listed as being twenty-three years old.’
‘What?’ Clara frowns, pressing her fingers into her forehead. ‘No, that’s not possible, he was just born – in 1939 at the earliest. It must be someone else.’
‘That’s very unlikely, Miss Cohen, given the specificity of his name.’
‘Then why weren’t you able to find a birth certificate?’
‘He clearly can’t have been born in Amsterdam. I checked the records myself and there was no record of his birth, I am quite certain of that.’
‘But, but …’ Clara trails off, feeling a little desperate. ‘I don’t, I don’t …’
‘As I said before, Miss Cohen, I can’t help you interpret the facts. But I thought you’d want to know them, nevertheless.’
‘Yes, of course, thank you,’ Clara mumbles. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘You’re very welcome, Miss Cohen. Good day to you.’
‘Yes, you …’ But, before she can get the sentence out, Clara hears the phone go dead as Mrs de Groot moves on to other, more important business.
Clara walks and walks. She has to see Pieter, has to tell him about this new twist in her tale, ask him what he thinks, ask him to hold her so she can stop shaking. And then, all of a sudden, she realises. But, of course. It wasn’t the baby Otto who died in Herzogenbusch. It was his father.