Our dearest, darling Otto,
I cannot quite believe I am writing this. I can’t believe I am writing at all. I should, surely, be out in the streets, dancing, shouting joy and victory from the rooftops. And yet, I have become so used to writing now, it is part of my speech, my expression, and so I feel I have to write this momentous moment down, to commemorate it, to be sure that it has really happened.
Mr X was the one who told me. I’ve only seen him half a dozen times since coming here but, occasionally, he visits the cellar to tell me when something significant happens, something to give us hope that the end might be in sight. In the last few months, since the start of the year, he’s visited the most often of all. On January 27th, when Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. On April 12th, when the Allies liberated the Buchenwald and Belsen camps. On April 30th, when the Führer committed suicide. And today, May 8th, to say that yesterday was the unconditional surrender of all German forces.
Tomorrow I will leave this place. Tomorrow I will see daylight for the first time in nearly two years and Otto will see it for the first time in his life. Tomorrow I won’t have to whisper, I won’t have to shush and keep Otto silent any more. Tomorrow I will come to find you.
Ever Yours,
Marthe
Ava receives the letter and the phone call on the same morning. The phone call to tell her that Ross has died and the letter he has written. The phone call comes first, so when the letter arrives it is laced with an extra layer of poignancy. The letter is a surprise, though the phone call is not, since Ava knew it was coming. She didn’t know exactly when, but she knew it would be soon.
She had spent the past week debating with herself, every minute of every hour of every day, whether or not to tell him. Although, even then, even as she tore herself apart, Ava knew that the answer would always be ‘no’. She wouldn’t tell him. He’d said, once, that he wouldn’t want to know particulars of his death, nor the fact that it was imminent, and she would respect that. She understood. She wouldn’t want to know either, and so she understood.
Now she sits in her hallway, leaning back against the front door, eyes closed, for the entire afternoon until, at last, she opens the letter. She decides it’s either now or at three o’clock in the morning and, Ava well knows, that even minor upsets feel significantly worse at three o’clock in the morning. She certainly doesn’t want to face a major one. For this letter, she’ll need the slight uplift of sunlight. She’ll need all the help she can get. And so, as the last of the evening light falls through the windows, Ava opens the letter.
Dear Ava,
Why am I writing to you? Probably because you won’t answer my calls. Joke. I jest. Don’t take offence. Have I said something typically rude, brash or annoying and now you’re punishing me for it? If so, please stop. I miss you. Anyway, I’m just on my way to track you down, nay, stalk you, so I’ll find out what’s up soon enough, I’ll wheedle it out of you. I have my ways of making people speak, my means, but I promise not to use any of my very worst instruments of torture on you. At least, not at first …
But, before we get to the good stuff, I have to tell you this. I’ve been thinking a lot about what job you could do and I’ve hit on it! A counsellor or, more precisely, a grief counsellor. Aye, now, I know that sounds like the most bloody depressing job in the entire world. But think about it for a wee sec. You’d never – at least, not often – have to censor yourself, you’d be working with people who’d probably already experienced the worst event of their lives and you’d get to chat with them about that. Well, not ‘chat’ maybe, but you get my point. Anyway, the idea came to me in a lightning strike of inspiration, as all my best ideas do, so you should really pay heed to it. Promise?
All right, now it’s time for me to scuttle off and stalk you,
Tallyho & all that,
Ross
Of course, Ava should have realised that she wouldn’t have been able to sleep after reading the letter, anyway. She wouldn’t be able to think of anything else. She almost – but not quite – laughs at the irony of his suggestion, given her current situation. It’s the second great grief she’s suffered now, after her sister, so she’d certainly be experientially qualified for the vocation, if not yet practically. Though that’d only be a matter of learning and Ava has always loved learning. She only wishes that Ross had been able to tell her himself. And so she sits in her hallway, until long past three, until, at last, she falls asleep, still clutching the letter in her lap.
Clara sits behind the counter in her little shop. Still she’s receiving a letter from Pieter every day and the pen drawer is nearly bursting with them. Still she hasn’t opened a single one. She is exhausted. Not just because she can hardly stop crying, though of course that doesn’t help, but the impact of pregnancy on her body is something she simply hadn’t imagined. The baby is still so tiny, but Clara is so tired all the time that she has to close the shop for a few hours at lunchtime and sleep on the floor or at her chair. It doesn’t matter where, she’s out like a light in less than a minute. Mercifully, she hasn’t actually thrown up yet, though nausea sweeps over her constantly, not simply in the morning.
Unfortunately, the tiredness means that she hasn’t been taking her evening walks. Which is a shame, since she misses sitting at her writing desk and she misses writing the letters. It’s also a shame since she’s still curious to see the man who lives on Riverside Drive, the one with the daughter. Clara wants to double-check that her letters have taken effect, that he’s happier now. She also imagines that she might ask him for a little parenting advice, as she still hasn’t told or asked anyone anything about the baby, not even her mother.
Her customers keep her fairly distracted and she’s now read every one of the seventy-eight letters she received while in Amsterdam. It was so touching to take delivery of all that love and appreciation that Clara hasn’t been able to look any of her customers in the eye for several days, for fear she might spontaneously hug them or, more likely, cry.
She’s been waiting for food cravings, but hasn’t been struck by anything strange just yet. No desperate desires for pickles and ice cream or bacon dipped in peanut butter. But she does get seized by sudden unexpected urges every now and then. Last Wednesday she stayed up until three in the morning reorganising her bookshelves into alphabetical order. Yesterday she spent nearly an entire day trying to remember how to knit so she could begin a baby blanket. Today, as she sits behind the counter, Clara is grabbed by an instant impulse to force open the locked drawer of the little writing desk. She’d quite forgotten about it since returning home and, before she’d left, she hadn’t felt desperate desires or insatiable curiosities regarding anything much, not the greater things in life, certainly not inconsequential things like locked drawers. And yet, now, all of a sudden, she has to know. No matter what it takes, Clara will open that drawer.
Three hours later, having tried everything she can think of, including attempts to pick the lock as well as prise it open with a pair of scissors, Clara is truly exhausted and thoroughly fed up. If the desk wasn’t the most precious object she owns in the world, Clara would right now take an axe to it, or a crowbar. But, of course, she won’t. Not only could she not bear the idea of hurting the ornate little writing desk, but she also imagines that even a scratch on its intricately carved surface might spoil its special powers altogether. And so Clara sits on the floor beside the desk, legs outstretched, contemplating her next move: tears or sleep.
Just as she’s starting to nod off, the door to the little shop opens and a customer steps inside. Clumsily, drowsily, Clara stumbles to her feet.
‘Oh, sorry,’ the customer says, ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
‘No, no, you’re not.’ Clara blinks, rubbing her eyes. ‘I was just … Oh, hello.’ She recognises this woman, though for a moment, Clara can’t quite place her. And then she remembers. ‘You came in a few months ago; you wrote a letter to your sister.’
‘Yes.’ Ava nods, surprised to be remembered. ‘I did. Thank you. It … It helped me a great deal and, soon after that, well, my life changed a great deal too.’
‘Oh,’ Clara says. ‘For the better, I hope.’
Ava smiles. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘Have you come to write another letter?’
Ava nods again. ‘Yes. To a dear friend who died a few weeks ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Ava takes a deep breath. ‘It’s okay. I mean, not for him. But I don’t really feel like he’s gone, silly as that sounds. So much of what he wanted for me has happened, so I rather feel like he’s still with me, same as he ever was. I still talk to him in my head, all the time, though I know that’s silly too.’
‘No,’ Clara says, ‘not silly at all.’
‘Actually, he wrote me a letter, before he died. And I think, by the paper, that he wrote it here.’
‘Oh? When was that?’
‘Sometime between two and three weeks ago. He’s Scottish. Cheeky. Handsome.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Clara exclaims. ‘I remember him. He was lovely. In fact, he …’
‘He told you something?’ Ava asks. ‘He gave you some great life advice? It’s okay, don’t worry, I won’t ask.’ She smiles. ‘It was his thing.’
‘He was very good at it.’
‘Yes, yes, he still is too, judging by the answers I hear in my head,’ Ava says. ‘I’m writing to thank him for that, for everything.’
‘That’s lovely, I’m glad,’ Clara says. ‘I might write to thank him myself.’
Ava smiles again. She looks at the writing desk, then her gaze drops to the floor, to the instruments and implements strewn about.
‘Um, what are you doing?’ The old Ava, the pre-Ross Ava, wouldn’t have been so bold, so intrusive and impertinent. But the new Ava just says what she thinks, within reason – she isn’t quite as outrageous as Ross was, not yet.
Clara follows Ava’s gaze to the floor. Her first impulse is to lie. To protect her family secrets from this virtual stranger. But there’s something about Ava she likes and trusts, even more so than the first time she saw her, so many months ago. She would, Clara thinks, probably make a rather perfect friend.
‘I was trying to force open a locked drawer in my desk.’
‘Did you lose the key?’
‘No,’ Clara admits. ‘I never had it. It was locked when I got it.’
Ava’s eyes brighten with interest. ‘Have you tried to open it before?’
‘Not really. I—’
‘No? Gosh, you’re so patient – I’d have been at it with a hammer the first day I bought it.’
‘Well, yeah, I used to be accepting, apathetic. Boring.’ Clara gives a wicked little grin. ‘But now I want in.’
Ava claps her hands. ‘Excellent!’
‘The only thing is, I can’t take a hammer to it, since I can’t damage the desk in any way. So my options are a little limited.’
‘Ah.’ Ava regards the desk. ‘Okay, so perhaps here’s where my skills come in use at last.’
‘Oh?’ Clara asks, feeling a spark of hope rise in her chest.
‘Well, I used to be a devourer of cryptic crossword puzzles and a gobbler of the written word,’ Ava says. ‘I work in a library, so that helps.’
Clara grins. ‘You’re a reader.’
‘Yes. And I’ve read about how these old writing desks were often built with hidden drawers, and that their visible drawers were sometimes designed with a secret catch that would unlock it from behind—’
‘Really?’ Clara asks, open-mouthed.
Ava nods. ‘Yes, I suppose it was in case the owner lost the key and didn’t have a copy. It was a quick, easy safeguard.’
‘Do you think this desk has one?’
Now Ava returns Clara’s wicked grin. ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out now, isn’t there?’
Both women dart towards the writing desk. Very gently, they lift it and place it carefully in the centre of the carpeted floor. Clara stands, watching, as Ava gets down on hands and knees to examine the back of the desk. Clara holds her breath, then quickly exhales once she starts to sway a little with dizziness.
A sharp, quick click sounds in the silent shop and Ava rises, a triumphant look on her face. ‘That’s it, I think. Try the drawer.’
Slowly, postponing the moment in case it’s all about to evaporate into nothing, Clara bends down and gives a little pull on the handle. It slides open.
The drawer is deeper than it looked from the outside, though it’s empty, save for a single envelope. A letter. And on it, in her great-grandmother’s handwriting is written: Otto Josef Garritt van Dijk. Clara picks it up, turns it over, and sees that it is still sealed. It has never been opened, never been read.