Shadow Sister. Литагент HarperCollins USD
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always felt the need to make the world a better place. As a five-year-old, I took the new kids at school under my wing, and this protectiveness carried on into middle and high school. For the bullied kids, my support made the difference between a quiet, unremarked existence and being the butt of classroom jokes. I was popular at school and other children followed my lead.
When I was fifteen, I started working on the school magazine. Before that, no one read the magazine; afterwards I’d see copies in school bags and on the tables in the canteen. My complaints about teachers discriminating against the immigrant students made me a kind of school heroine.
I’d take on anyone, whether it was about headscarves being tolerated in the classroom or smoking on school grounds.
I’ve only ever wanted to help.
As I drive home, I remember Bilal’s face as I fled the classroom, the aggression in his eyes, the complete arrogance of his manner. What I usually see with my Moroccan and Turkish students is that they’ve lost all sense of direction. These kids are born in the Netherlands, they grow up watching Sesame Street and Disney cartoons, but feel that they’re considered second-class citizens. They don’t feel Turkish or Moroccan, but don’t feel Dutch either. Caught between the culture of their parentage and the country they live in, they’re wrestling with their identity, anxious because there are no jobs to go to when they leave school, angry because they feel discriminated against.
If a student is having problems, I offer to buy them a drink, sit down with them, and discuss what’s going on, while respecting their social codes. We almost always find a solution. My teacher training didn’t prepare me for today. We were taught pedagogy and maintaining discipline, not how to handle aggression or violence.
I’m almost home when I think of how empty it will be there: the silent rooms, nobody to tell my story to. Should I go to Raoul instead? It’s ten past three, he’ll be in a meeting right now. To Elisa’s then? If she’s busy she’ll make time. You can always drop in on her.
Elisa is my twin sister. We’re identical twins, but I’m fifteen minutes older; perhaps that’s the reason I’ve always protected her – first from the school bullies and later from a crowd who liked to spike your drinks with ecstasy and cadge money from you.
When Elisa set up a photography studio, I soon realised that her lack of business acumen would stand in the way of success. She wasn’t assertive enough to get new clients and she let the clients she did have barter her prices down. In any case, the studio didn’t attract much custom. Not that it really mattered, neither of us has to work. We come from a wealthy family; wealthy and old and noble. It’s not something that particularly interests us – we never talk about it.
But money can’t buy everything. Our parents always impressed on us that we should study and get jobs, that it was more comfortable to have wealth, but that shouldn’t be the guiding principle in life. We weren’t spoilt as children; we got the same pocket money as the others, did Saturday jobs and had to take on a paper round if we wanted extra money. It was an education I feel deeply grateful to my parents for.
I would have got by on my salary, but my husband’s company would never have got off to such a flying start without the cash injection from my parents. I wonder whether Elisa could actually make a living from her photography.
To help her along I regularly have a series of portraits of Valerie taken. She never wants to charge me, but of course I pay the going price.
My husband has a successful software company and I asked him to give Elisa as many advertising commissions as he could. It turned out he’d been doing that all along, which I should have known because Raoul and Elisa get on really well.
I’m happy about that because Elisa is just as important to me as Raoul, perhaps even more so. The idea that identical twins have a special connection is true for us.
I’m often asked what it’s like being a twin. It’s a curious question. It’s not that I’m unaware of how unusual it is to have an identical twin, but other people’s reactions always remind me of how disarming our likeness is. I do see the physical resemblance, of course, but we are so different in nearly everything else. For example, Elisa is sportier than me. I rarely wear trousers, and she rarely wears a skirt. I’m extroverted, energetic and spontaneous; Elisa is relaxed and self-contained. I like shopping and going out, she’d rather go for a long walk in the countryside, and I could go on…
Elisa’s studio is on Karel Doorman Street, next to the Coolsingel Canal and Raoul’s offices. I park at Software International because finding a parking space in the centre of Rotterdam is nigh on impossible. When I get out of my car, my eyes follow the fire escape up to the third floor, to Raoul’s office. I half expect his face to appear at the window, as if he might have sensed that I need him, but he’s not there. Should I text him? Perhaps the meeting has finished or was cancelled.
I hesitate for a moment and then decide not to. Even if Raoul isn’t in a meeting, he doesn’t like to be disturbed at work. We made a deal about sharing the household chores and looking after Valerie and he never breaks it. If it’s my turn to do the shopping and I forget the milk, I have to go back to the shop to get it, I mustn’t bother Raoul. If I have a problem picking up Valerie from school, it’s not his problem. It works the other way too though: I can always count on him getting Valerie to school on time each morning, with her gym kit, a boxed drink and a biscuit. She’s just turned six and is in the second year of primary school. Two weeks ago she went on a school trip with her class. I was on a course that day, so Raoul was the one who carefully read the instruction sheet from the school and made sure that Valerie had everything she needed. They were first in the queue at the playground waiting for the bus, and when I got home from my course, she’d already had her bath and was eating her dinner. That’s what Raoul is like. You know exactly what you’re getting with him. Right now I only want one thing – to tell him what happened, and for him to comfort me and reassure me that I did the right thing by not going to the police.
I cross the Coolsingel in low spirits and walk towards Karel Doorman Street. Elisa occupies the ground floor of a small, narrow building with Elisa’s Photographic Studio painted on its window in pretty black lettering. It’s not a very imaginative name for someone as creative as my sister, but she thinks it works.
I push open the door and a bell tinkles. I always feel like I’ve wandered into an old-fashioned grocer’s shop, like the ones in the television adaptation of Pippi Longstocking. When we were children, Elisa and I used to be mad about Pippi Longstocking. For at least a year I got up to the same kind of tricks as Pippi, with Elisa following in my wake like a second Annika. Whenever I hear the theme tune, I get the urge to do something rebellious.
The front room of the studio is empty. That’s to say, the walls are covered in photographs, but Elisa isn’t here.
‘Elisa?’
‘I’m out back.’
I make my way out the back. She’s at her computer, dressed sportily as usual, wearing khaki trousers and a white sweater. Her brown hair is gathered up in a ponytail and she pushes one escaped curl away from her face.
‘Hey, sis,’ she says. ‘Don’t you always finish much later on Mondays?’
‘Yes,’ I say simply.
My twin looks at me in alarm. ‘Has something happened?’
The emptiness is waiting for me after the funeral, a terrible, apathetic emptiness. In the first few weeks after her death, I was too dazed for it to really sink in. It was as if I’d run full speed into a wall and just stood there swaying, too stunned to feel the blow.
I didn’t hear