December 2024
Anneliese
ANNELIESE’S TRAIN PULLED into Central Station at a few minutes before four o’clock. She had left her bicycle in the fietsflat on the south side of the station. The three-story garage looked like a bicycle graveyard, filled with decomposing two-wheelers. A shiny new bicycle parked in an unguarded stall would be stolen in no time.
She unlocked her bicycle and exited the fietsflat, watching for ice on the pavement. She slowed as she approached the footbridge that spanned the canal separating the station from the city center. Bridges froze sooner than roads, sometimes before the salt trucks were called out.
After successfully navigating the icy bridge, she turned onto the Singel. Cars jammed the street, but bicycles moved at a steady clip on the cycling path. As she picked up speed, her front wheel wobbled slightly. She would ask Willem to look at it.
She fell into a trance, as she often did while cycling over a familiar route. She kept thinking about her visit with Bep. Louisa had thrown a lamp. She had yelled, “You can’t back out now.” It seemed plausible that Louisa had pressured Katja into giving up her baby. Why? And why go to such lengths to keep the pregnancy a secret? Other options would have been far less complicated.
A bicycle bell pinged. Hooded pedestrians scurried along the pavement. Umbrellas sprang up like mushrooms as a light rain fell. Anneliese’s hands ached from the cold. She pedaled faster, eager to get home to central heating and hot coffee before the sky opened up in earnest.
Then things happened fast.
Anneliese’s bicycle slipped sideways. She tried to catch herself by stretching out her left leg, but her bicycle disintegrated beneath her. One moment she was on the saddle, bent low over the handlebars. The next moment, the pavement flew up to meet her.
When she opened her eyes, she was sprawled on the wet gritty asphalt, cyclists rushing around her like a stream parting for a boulder. Until someone stopped. Then someone else. Soon a ring of concerned faces peered down at her, noses glowing red in the cold.
“Should I call an ambulance?”
“Stand back and give her some room.”
“Can you hear me?”
“Did you hit your head?”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Can you move your toes?”
Too many questions. Too dazed. She sat up. Her left shoulder and arm throbbed with pain.
She could wriggle her toes.
Bicycles detoured into the street beyond the crowd. She glimpsed a familiar face—middle-aged, attractive, blonde. It disappeared before she could put a name to the face.
“Let’s move you off the cycling path,” said a man with a comforting bass voice.
The man helped her to her feet. A woman stopped the stream of cyclists while the man carried Anneliese to the sidewalk and lowered her to the ground, propping her up against the front of a shop. A teenage girl moved her bicycle to the sidewalk and went back for the front wheel. The bicycle traffic resumed. The three Samaritans—as Anneliese called them in her head—were bundled up in coats with hoods. Someone held a purple umbrella over her head.
Blood dripped steadily onto her lap.
“Hold this against your chin,” the woman said, pressing a tissue into her hand.
“What happened?” Anneliese asked.
“Your front wheel came off,” said the bass voice.
“Where am I?”
“On the Singel. What’s your name?” he asked.
“Anneliese.”
“Do you want me to call someone for you, Anneliese?”
Good idea. Call Willem. Willem will know what to do. “Where’s my backpack?” she asked.
It was still strapped to her back. The man unzipped the outside pocket, found her phone, and handed it to her. She called Willem. Got voicemail. He must be with a patient. She selected Katja’s number. Got voicemail again. Of course, Katja didn’t take calls while she was working. She tried Hendrik, who answered on the first ring.
“Will you ask Willem to call me? Tell him it’s an emergency.”
“Can I help?”
“Just tell Willem.” She hung up.
Willem called two minutes later. “What’s wrong?”
Her words refused to come, so she handed the phone to the Samaritan with the bass voice. It was as if he were talking about someone else.
“Anneliese had an accident … No, I don’t think so, but I’m not a doctor … Her arm and a bang on the head. Her chin might need stitches … Yes, she’s responsive … The front wheel came off … I’ll stay with her until you get here.” The man gave Willem the address.
The Singel was only a couple of miles from the house, but distance in the city center was not a reliable indicator of travel time. Traffic snarls. One-way streets. Road construction. Moving vans blocking the way. The teenage girl and the woman Samaritan had left by the time a taxi pulled up. Willem jumped out, carrying a first aid kit, his handsome face creased with worry.
He examined the cut on her chin, which was still oozing blood, and covered it with a dressing. For a moment, his face transformed into Tineke’s, a lighted cigarette dangling from her mouth while she bandaged six-year-old Anneliese’s pinkie after Daan slammed a door on it.
Willem said, “Let’s get you into the taxi.”
The purple umbrella that had been sheltering her disappeared.
He helped her into the backseat while the last Samaritan loaded the remains of the bicycle into the trunk.
The taxi driver lowered his window. “Don’t get blood on the seats.”
“It’s under control,” Willem snapped. He shook the Samaritan’s hand and climbed in next to Anneliese.
“Take us to the OLVG East,” Willem told the driver.
“Address?”
“It’s the hospital opposite Oosterpark.”
“Sorry, sir, I need the street name and number.”
Swearing, Willem consulted his phone and gave the address to the driver, who entered it into his satnav and eased the car into the traffic. The wipers swept the windshield.
“Why are we going to the hospital?” Anneliese asked.
“To make sure your arm isn’t broken. And your chin needs stitches.”
“Did my face get banged up?” she asked, touching her cheek.
He took her hand away. “It’s just a scrape. It won’t scar if it doesn’t get infected.”
Her chest tightened. The baby! She didn’t feel any bleeding down there. Wasn’t that a good sign? For the first time since the accident, tears brimmed. She started shivering and couldn’t stop.
“Were you unconscious, even for a few seconds?” Willem asked.
“I don’t remember. Maybe. Willem … the baby.”
“I’m sure the baby’s fine.” He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. She leaned her head against him, his body warm and solid.
“Are you sure?”
“Do you have any cramping or bleeding?”
“No.”
“A pregnancy can take a tumble.”
Damn bicycle. “They said my front wheel came off.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Were you with a patient when I called?”
“No, I popped out to the shops. I was at the checkout. Before I could call back, Hendrik rang. Did you have a nice lunch with your friend?”
“What?”
“You went to Utrecht to meet a friend.”
He meant the imaginary friend who was studying at the university there. She nodded and gazed out the car window, which was drizzled with rain. “Where are we going?”
He gave her a searching look. “To the hospital. Do you know who I am?”
“Of course, Willem. Why do you ask?”
“You might have a concussion.”
She closed her eyes. “Why did my wheel come off?”
“The nut that holds the wheel on the frame must have fallen out. Did you take off the wheel to fix a flat recently?”
Why was it so hard to think? Her head pounded with the effort. She couldn’t remember ever having had a flat on the bicycle. “I don’t think so.”
“How old is the bike?”
“I bought it secondhand last summer. It was old then.” She had a vague recollection of a man with stringy hair, bloodshot eyes, and dirty fingernails, on a side street, snatching a ten-euro bill from her in exchange for the bicycle.
“Maybe it was worn out,” Willem said.
She tried to put together the pieces of the accident but drew a blank. The last thing she remembered was crossing the footbridge by Central Station. She wondered if her memory loss was permanent. The taxi was crawling in heavy traffic along the Prins Hendrikkade. On their left stretched the IJ, the water rippling in the rain. A few minutes later, the driver turned at the intersection before the tunnel; passed the fire station, which resembled an abandoned warehouse; and stopped at the red light by the old Catholic church.
A thought occurred to her.
“My bicycle was parked at the station. Do you think someone loosened the nut as a prank? Or maybe tried to steal the tire?”
“Was it a new tire?”
She shook her head no.
“The nut may have been loose for a long time. I’ll buy you a new bicycle.”
The taxi was warm. Willem’s body was warm. She nodded sleepily, then recalled with a jolt the familiar face in the crowd, the one she couldn’t place while she was sprawled on the bicycle path after her fall. The middle-aged blonde with dark roots. An overripe peach.
“After I fell, I saw the woman you introduced me to in the Italian restaurant—the psychologist.”
“Jeanette Bruin? That’s not possible. She’s back in London.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
The longer Anneliese thought about it, the more positive she became. Either the woman on the bicycle was Jeanette Bruin, or she was her doppelgänger. Her head pounded. Willem was certain the psychologist was back in London.
Her thoughts flitted back to what she could remember in the immediate aftermath of her fall. Shock. Confusion. The three Samaritans. The purple umbrella. She didn’t know anyone else whose wheel had come off while cycling. She racked her brain, trying to recall any recent bumps that might have jarred the nut loose, but nothing came to mind. Maybe the blame lay with the previous owner.
Willem was right. There was nothing sinister at hand.
Then she felt cramps like her period.