Just to make sure, Lucy waited a while longer. Over the howling of the wind she could now hear the voices in the living room, that’s how loud and angry they were. She listened, aghast. There was a huge fight going on in there, an argument that matched the storm in its ferocity and made the walls quake. The whole house shook like a nuclear-power plant about to blow. Why were her mother and the Luducos screaming at each other, when normally they were the most conciliatory people in the entire world? It sounded as if things were being said that were better left unsaid, sour recriminations that had been pent up for so long that they’d begun to ferment and were now being spewed out in one big belch. The harsh words just kept coming; Lucy couldn’t make head or tail of what they were saying, it was all just a great barrage of fury. Maybe she should go back inside and tell a funny joke or something. But just as she was considering that option, she heard, clear as a bell, her own name yelled out accusingly. Startled, she clapped her hands over her ears. Whatever it was that was being fought about so bitterly, it had something to do with her.
On tiptoe so as not to make the gravel crunch, she turned and ran into the street. Behind her the rectory grew smaller and smaller. She raced as fast as her legs would carry her, putting as much distance as possible between her and her mother poring over the Tarot cards to determine the most auspicious time for their move to the big city, and the Luducos yammering and wringing their pale hands because they were losing their lodgings.
We tossed and turned in our beds as Lucy bolted from the old village, leaving behind the patchouli scent, the string of Christmas lights over her bed, the juice you could spill without anyone raising an eyebrow, the tea you didn’t have to drink, the picture of Clara 13 in the room where stories came to life. On her way to the house you weren’t allowed to enter until you’d wiped your feet a good sixty times. To the linoleum that had been scrubbed to within an inch of its life. To the chlorine bleach that fizzed angrily at you.
Had the same thought suddenly occurred to Lucy, too? Her pounding feet started sounding like a tune that’s lost its rhythm; or, you might even say, like a song sung backward. Her steps faltered and slowed. But the wind grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, pushed and prodded her in the back, and drove her on as if she were a dry autumn leaf. She started thrashing her arms and her legs. She tried to dig her heels into the pavement. But the wind roared, On, on you go! You are mine now, because just a minute ago you were using me as your cover, and now you’ll have to pay!
We hugged our plush giraffes and bunnies to our chests. We were in such a state that we wished we could stick our thumbs in our mouths, but you weren’t supposed to; if your teeth grew in crooked, you’d never make it very far. Our mothers never tired of reminding us of that, tapping a fingernail against their own pearly whites. They were always fretting about our future.
And who, meanwhile, was supposed to worry about the present?
We, of course. Really, it was all up to us. But our eyelids were growing so very heavy. We knew we had an obligation to stay awake with Lucy in her hour of need, but the urge to fall asleep kept growing stronger, just like the wind. We, too, put up a mighty struggle, and we, too, lost the fight.
But ours was not a peaceful sleep. Hovering somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, our minds dreamed up the weirdest scenarios. Lucy ringing the doorbell at Shepherd’s Close, as if it were the most natural thing in the word.
She lucked out; it wasn’t that walking dust mop that opened the door, it was Thomas’s father. He was just as relaxed, just as self-assured, as in the classroom the first day, talking to Miss Joyce. Come on in, kid. A glass of milk? And a biscuit? Oh, don’t worry about the crumbs. What did you say? You’re coming to live with us? But of course, you’re very welcome. The first thing I thought that day you arrived late for school was, That girl could have been my own daughter.
We sat up in bed, blinking. That Lucy, she always did manage to land in clover. Things had a habit of going her way. She was indomitable.
She sat down in the living room, making herself at home on the sofa covered in a starched, clean linen sheet.
‘Do you want to listen to some music, Lucy?’ asked the stinging-nettle man, stretching his back, hands laced behind his neck.
‘Sure,’ said Lucy. She felt like the queen of the castle.
‘What would you like to hear?’
At home they never asked her what she wanted to hear. At home she had to put up with the Rolling Stones or Satie, or whatever else the adults were in the mood for. From now on she would be in charge of the mood. The music she now chose would be hers and hers alone, charged with the significance of this moment: Thomas’s father saying she could stay with them, forever.
We must have nodded off again for a bit.
Now she was sitting on his lap, wide-eyed; it wasn’t only the music she liked that interested him, he also wanted to know her favourite colour, what she liked to eat, and which fairy tale she liked best. Everything she said fascinated him.
‘Red,’ she said, ‘or, no, orange.’ She hadn’t ever really given it much thought, but she was definitely the kind of girl who would go for orange—a hectic, dangerous colour.
Where would she like to go, if she had the choice? To the island of Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, of course.
Her favourite animal was the moose.
Her favourite thing to wear was her Winnie the Pooh sweater.
Sport: soccer.
Season: spring, the first time you’re allowed outside without a coat.
Ice cream: pistachio.
She gave the answers thoughtfully. She was like a page in a colouring book being filled in bit by bit. It became more and more obvious what she was: she wasn’t the dumbest kid in the class who was going to be sent to another school in disgrace; no, on the contrary, she was someone with exceptional taste and ideas. Not that at home they hadn’t been interested—quite the opposite. But her mother always assumed she knew what Lucy had to say before the words even passed her lips. Even before she opened her mouth, her mother had already jumped to some conclusion. You never got to understand yourself that way.
He laughed when she told him. His arms, hugging her chest, had big muscles from pushing the mower. He smelled of woodbine, earthy and wild.
What she would do with a million guilders.
What she’d never have the guts to do.
What she was best at.
What kind of things she collected.
What she’d most like to know.
Breathlessly, we sat up in our beds again. Here’s your chance, Lucy! Here, finally, is the answer, offered to you on a silver platter.
She didn’t have to think it over, not even for half a second. ‘Where babies come from,’ she said, nestling even more snugly in his lap.
Outside, the wind howled as if it had had a door slammed shut on its fingers. Inside, our parents blew out the candles, they carried their glasses to the kitchen, they turned off the lights, they brushed their teeth, and went to bed.
When we woke up that Sunday morning, we knew we must have dreamed the whole thing, because when we passed the rectory, we could see Lucy sitting in her dormer window, hugging her knees, her back pressed against the window frame. We yelled up at her, but she didn’t react. She knew, of course, that we couldn’t wait to make her pay for being such a braggart. Oh, going to run away, was she? ‘Sissy!’ we yelled. ‘Scaredy-cat!’
The rest of the rectory’s windows were still curtained, which somehow made the house look as if it harboured a secret that