Their very own paradise.
“It’s just perfect,” Tamara concludes. “That’s all. Nothing else has happened.”
Astrid is about to say something, when she hears someone calling behind her.
“Yoohoo, Tamara!”
The sisters turn round. Helena Belzen stands waving on the shore. She is seventy-four and wears a pullover that makes her look like the Michelin man. She has wrapped scarves around her hips and her neck, on her head she wears a woollen cap. In her right hand she has a shovel, in her left a bucket.
“Helena, this is my sister Astrid,” Tamara explains.
“Pleased to meet you,” says Helena, pointing with her spade to the dinghy. “Isn’t it a bit cold to be rowing about on the lake?”
“Tell that to my sister,” says Astrid.
“How are you two?” asks Tamara.
“Joachim’s taking his radio apart again, and I can’t keep out of the garden,” Helena replies, shaking the bucket. “I could spend the whole day burrowing about in the earth. Are we seeing each other on Sunday?”
“I’ll bring cake.”
“Wonderful!”
Helena waves goodbye and disappears into the undergrowth of her garden.
“Are you having a kaffeeklatsch with the old girl?” Astrid whispers.
“She’s invited me four times, it gets embarrassing eventually. And I like the Belzens. Wait till you see her husband. They’re a dream couple. The day we moved in, they moored on our side and brought us a bag of salt and fresh bread.”
“What do you need parents for?” Astrid says and looks back at the villa. “I still can’t believe it. If you weren’t my little sister, I’d push you in the water right now, is that clear? Shit, why doesn’t stuff like this happen to me? Have you any idea how many guys I’ve picked up in the faint hope that one of them might have enough money to buy me something like this? I hate you, do you know that?”
“I know.”
“So what are you grinning about?”
“Maybe because it’s so cold?”
“Very funny, Tammi.”
They grin at each other.
“Can I at least see the joint from inside, before you banish me back to my pathetic little life?”
Tamara lowers the oars into the water and sets course for their pad.
KRIS
IT WAS HALF A day before they managed to track down Julia Lambert.
The job center plays its cards close to the vest, so Kris tries to find her new workplace indirectly. Frauke helps him with that. It takes them fifteen minutes to log on to the employment agency.
“How illegal have you just been?” Kris wondered.
Frauke held her thumb and index finger a millimeter apart.
Julia Lambert has been with the company for a week. The office with a view of the parking lot is like a waiting room. Cardboard boxes in the corner, electric cables temporarily installed, a dusty plant by the window. Probably Julia Lambert isn’t entirely sure whether it’s worth making this workplace entirely her own. Her hesitation is like the one of the four prints on the wall that hangs at an angle.
“You must have heard that we’ve split up.”
Kris nods, Hessmann’s secretary told him everything. The boss himself didn’t want to say anything on the subject.
“I was amazed you didn’t lodge a complaint,” says Kris.
Julia laughs briefly.
“How do you take action against someone like Hessmann? He has more lawyers than employees. And who would believe me? What proof do I have? For a while I thought about burning down the office building, but can you imagine where that would have got me?”
In jail, Kris thinks, and agrees, she did the right thing.
“I’m here to apologize to you,” he says.
“You?”
“Me.”
“Why you?”
“My agency represents Hessmann. Since we took on the commission, it’s a personal thing for me if my client makes mistakes. I’m something like his conscience. And you can bet that someone like Hessmann wants to have a clean conscience.”
She doesn’t react, she looks at the card.
“Hence Sorry?”
“Because we apologize.”
“For other people?”
“For other people, yes. Do you want to tell me what happened in your own words?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
Julia Lambert nods and clasps her hands. The card is in front of her on the table. Kris shouldn’t force it now. Her gestures are unambiguous. But it’s a good sign that she set the visiting card down on the table faceup. Kris can see the logo, he’s very pleased with the logo. They look at one another. Kris will keep his mouth shut until Julia Lambert speaks first. She needs time to think about his words.
Her history is typical. Since Sorry took on its first commission, there have been several such cases. Her boss had an affair with her and fired her when he craved fresh meat. You could call that the end of a career. The secretary, of course, put it differently.
Julia Lambert is someone who learns from her mistakes. Kris can see that she will get back on her own two feet all by herself. But he also sees that she’s still preoccupied by her humiliation. Not being able to defend herself, being totally subject to the word of someone who was first her boss, then her lover, and finally her boss again.
Where the emotions are concerned, we all cave in sooner or later, Kris thinks, and is glad to keep the thought to himself.
“You don’t have to apologize,” Julia Lambert says after a minute.
“No one said anything about having to,” Kris replies. “Hessmann knows he made a mistake. And you know that he would never personally admit it to you. People like Hessmann make things easy for themselves. He changes his women as often as he changes his tie.”
Her eyebrows contract, Kris could bite his tongue. How can I be such an idiot? What is this? A chat over a glass of beer? He has universalized Julia Lambert, and made a crude mistake.
“I’m sorry. The image was inappropriate.”
“Keep talking.”
“I’m not here to offer you money,” says Kris, although that’s exactly why he’s here. “Money is comfortable, and I think you’re concerned about more than comfort.”
Bull’s-eye. She doesn’t nod, she doesn’t shake her head, her right hand has found the business card again, and is turning it around in her fingers. She waits for more.
“As you know, Hessmann has contacts. The business listens to him. And when I see where the job center has sent you …”
Kris sums up her office with a wave of his hand.
“… then I think you deserve better.”
“You do?”