Karen was always steady as a rock, but now she looked washed out, like a Dahlia after a summer shower, the head too heavy for its stem. “I’m fine,” she said bravely, but her haggard eyes told a different story.
I stroked her arm. She felt brittle and vulnerable, despite the fact that she seemed to have put on some weight. “I’m sure there will be ample new opportunities for you ahead, you’re such a champ,” I said, and although I genuinely meant it, it sounded like a cliché.
Karen failed to respond to my well-intended comment. “Drinks, anyone?” she asked.
I thought guiltily of all those bottles of white wine that I’d knocked back at home lately. I’d obviously never do anything stupid, I had to take care of Tim and look after my patients at work. Nonetheless, nearly every evening I’d consume a few glasses, otherwise I’d have a hard time falling asleep. “I’m still good,” I answered.
I wasn’t sure how to bring it up, but I had to get it off my chest. My recent discovery had been so incredibly painful that it felt like I would burst. I looked at my girlfriends – everyone seemed lost in thought – and decided, without hesitating any further, to drop the bombshell.
“He was seeing someone,” I blurted.
Nobody said a word. Frederique blinked, looking appalled.
I felt anger welling up inside. “Are you listening? Oliver was having an affair. Involved with another woman.” I punched the table with my fist and made Lindsey’s gin and tonic almost spill over. “He had a mistress!”
Karen looked around uncomfortably, aware of the looks from the other tables.
“Oliver?” Frederique asked, seemingly in disbelief.
I nodded and felt tears welling up.
“You’ve got to be kidding. What a complete asshole!” Karen bluntly exclaimed.
“Hey, you’re talking about her late husband, remember?” Frederique spluttered.
I started weeping.
“So what? No point in skirting around the truth, is there?” Karen countered uncouthly, but for once I was actually happy with her frank reaction.
Lindsey swore and wrapped her arm around me. “K, you can be really inappropriate sometimes, you know?”
The tears were now rolling down my cheeks, my shoulders heaving with each sob. I felt mortified.
“Oh my goodness. Jenn, how incredibly painful for you,” Frederique said gently.
I managed a slight bob of my head and whimpered.
“I’ll get you some water,” Karen said, sounding relieved to be able to make use of herself.
Frederique rummaged through her Louis Vuitton handbag, and after turning out a load of makeup, she handed me a paper tissue decorated with pink hearts.
Gratefully, I took it and carefully began to dab under my eyelashes. Now I remembered why I hadn’t worn any mascara during the last months. I probably looked like a clown now.
“I’m so sorry for you,” Frederique said, gently stroking my back. Lindsey had already been in the loop of course, but I hadn’t told her yet that I’d been in contact with Sandra.
Karen popped back from the bar carrying a glass of water. “Here you go, have a few sips,” she said.
I followed her instructions and then took a deep breath. “I’m alright now.”
“Do you want to share with us what happened?” Frederique asked.
I straightened my back, composed myself and then poured it all out.
10
I opened the door to Coffee Cups and was welcomed by their colourful rainbow logo. I looked around the place, which was filled with only a handful of people. I cursed, I had no idea what this woman looked like.
I had the assistant block the last hour of my morning clinic so that I could meet Sandra during the day. As it was fairly quiet, I soon laid eyes on a woman who looked questioningly at me. This had to be Sandra. She was different to how I’d imagined her to be. I’d subconsciously expected a blond bombshell with long, endless legs and a tiny waist and although admittedly Sandra was pretty, she wasn’t in a conventional way. She had a petite figure and frail shoulders – there was something delicate about her.
I walked up to her and introduced myself.
“Hi, I’m Sandra,” she said and responded to my handshake with a touch of her fingers. “I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances,” she added solemnly. I caught an expression of guilt on her face. “I felt terrible when I heard the tragic news about Oliver.”
I nodded and remained silent for a moment. “Well then, I’ll just go and get something to drink,” I said coolly. I wasn’t planning on going easy on her. “Would you like another?” I asked, gesturing at the cup she was clutching in her hands.
She smiled uncomfortably. “No thanks. I’m good.”
I walked to the counter and ordered a latte macchiato. As I was waiting, I thought about how surreal it felt to have a coffee with my late husband’s mistress – could I call her that?
I returned to the table with my order and took a seat facing Sandra, who was fiddling with her hands. My eyes fell on her long, red-painted nails and I imagined how she might have scratched Oliver’s back with them. The thought made me sick to my stomach.
Then she looked me straight in the eye. “Before you start, I want to offer my apologies.”
I stared at her in astonishment and could feel the anger starting to prevail again. “What exactly for?” I hissed. Did she fully comprehend what she’d put me through?
She was taken aback by my response and murmured something inaudible.
I leaned back on the soft, luxurious cushions and tried to calm myself down. By nature I had a fairly mild character, but lately I was flying off the handle more often than I’d like to. I raised my hand as a conciliatory gesture and sighed. “I’m sorry. We started off on the wrong foot. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. I just find this all very upsetting.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I can imagine. Well, I guess.”
For a short moment I realised that under different circumstances we could have become friends and I felt a shift in my attitude.
I put on a brave face and decided not to beat around the bush any longer. “I didn’t ask to meet you to be mad at you. I came here for some answers. Could you tell me what your relationship with Oliver was like? How did you two meet? How long have you been together? I need to know everything,” I added, ignoring the little voice in the back of my mind that said I shouldn’t be tormenting myself unnecessarily.
I took a sip from my latte, which to my annoyance was lukewarm. I considered for a moment going back to complain, but I had little interest in dealing with all the fuss.
The woman opposite me seemed to ponder my questions as I feared the possibly painful details that would emerge.
“We met almost four years ago at an event,” she began.
I felt the anger flashing deep inside again. “Four years ago?” I blurted. That was even before we were married. Had my husband deceived me all this time?
“Calm down,” Sandra soothed. “Nothing was going on back then.” She bit her lip. “My husband, Roderick, works at Mason & McGant, just like Oliver did. Roderick is one of the partners in the office and I accompanied him to a party when the office celebrated a big win. I got talking to your husband.”
I looked at her for a few moments. So her husband was in high places. Becoming a partner at a large, international law firm was pretty much the holy grail for every lawyer. Oliver had probably been flirting with her at that party, while I was sleeping ignorantly in our bed at home. I swallowed a bitter taste before I spoke again. “Carry on.”
“We talked for a while and then went our separate ways. He never crossed my mind again until I bumped into him in a bar some time ago.” Sandra avoided my gaze. “We drank a few glasses of wine and talked for a while. One thing led to another.” Before I could even comment, she jumped up. “I’m going to get another drink.”
I watched her defiantly sway her hips while she walked towards the other end of the r
estaurant, and I imagined how Oliver’s gaze must have strayed to her buttocks. Clenching my jaws, I turned my head to look outside, where a cyclist raced past a stroller. The woman pushing it shouted at him and raised her fist, but the man carried on without looking back.
Moments later Sandra returned and plopped down opposite me again, with a glass of green-coloured super juice in her hand. “Just went to the gym,” she explained.
I gave an insouciant shrug.
“Where were we?” she said light-heartedly, as if we’d just been catching up on the latest showbiz gossip.
“One thing led to another,” I repeated her last words and wondered what people meant when they said that. In my life nothing ever seemed to lead to something else.
She must have noticed my annoyance. “Hey, I’m sure this is all very upsetting for you. But I can’t help what your husband has been up to,” she said brusquely. She started getting up from her chair. “I came here on a voluntary basis, so if you’re going to continue to act like this, I’m out of here.”
I mustered up a half-hearted apology and stammered, “I’m sorry. This is killing me,” I said softly, opening my heart to this stranger in front of me. “You can’t imagine what it feels like to find out your husband was having an affair, before having passed away so suddenly. My life has been turned upside down.” I felt tears form in my eyes. “I can’t confront him with this. You’re the only one left who knows what exactly took place.”
She sat down again and patted my arm.
“Fair enough,” she replied. “What is it you’d like to know? I’ll try to answer your questions as best as I can.” Sandra took a sip of the green stuff and looked expectantly at me.
“How long did the affair last?” I started.
“Not long. About eight weeks, at most.”
Her response pleased me. Perhaps this relationship was of less importance than I’d assumed.
I hesitated. I had to ask, but was dreading the answer. “Did you ever … in our house?”
The question hung unanswered for a brief moment. She put her glass down in front of her. “No. Absolutely not. Not at his place, nor at mine. Only in a hotel.”
Although the idea of Oliver and Sandra booking a hotel – for an hour? – filled me with horror, I was relieved to learn that our house wasn’t tainted. I’d been agonising over this for days.
“What you’re saying explains a lot. In the lead-up to Oliver’s death, he was burning the midnight oil at least three evenings per week. Or that’s what he’d led me to believe. Now I know the real reason for his absence,” I said dejectedly.
Sandra looked at me in surprise. “I don’t know about that. We only saw each other about three times in total in all of those weeks.”
“Really?” So had Oliver actually been busy at work then, I wondered. “He was very irritable and preoccupied in the last months before his death. He’d told me that he was slogging away at a complicated case and since I found out about you I’d assumed that it was a lie, but perhaps he was telling the truth after all,” I reasoned out loud.
“Possibly.” Sandra was tapping her teeth with her fingernail. “I suddenly remember something,” she said. “Oliver once answered a phone call while we were together and during that conversation he was talking about a case at the firm about some guy named Van Santen. He kept repeating that name.”
I shrugged, wondering where this was going.
“When he hung up, I laughed and told him that my maiden name happened to be Van Santen. You should have seen his reaction,” Sandra said. “The serious look on his face scared me out of my wits. He furiously asked if I’d been eavesdropping on him. He made me promise that if anyone ever asked about it, I knew nothing.”
I shook my head. It was completely out of character for Oliver to react so aggressively to something insignificant. What the heck was this violent outburst about? “Did you ever touch upon the subject again?”
Sandra rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t dream of it. It clearly was a very sensitive matter.”
I mulled it over for a while before I spoke again. “It might explain his behaviour in that period. Perhaps this Van Santen was a demanding business case. Although I find it strange that he didn’t share it with me,” I said.
Sandra was silent.
I finished my latte with a large swig. “By the way, who ended the relationship?”
“You could say Oliver did. He suddenly stopped responding to my texts. After a while I got fed up and got the message. He just wasn’t that into me anymore.” Shock crossed her face. “Or was that because he …?”
I sat up. “Oliver died on the seventeenth of October.”
“Right.” Sandra seemed to reflect on it for a moment. “That must have been around that time. I saw that my messages hadn’t been received and had assumed that he’d taken a new number to cut me from his life. But now it actually appears …” Her voice trailed off.
I shook my head in disbelief. So if he hadn’t died, then Oliver might have just continued this whole affair, I thought wryly. So why had he insisted on going on a weekend getaway with the three of us? Oliver had said he wanted to bring us closer together, but Sandra’s words made me question his intentions.
My eyes fell on the golden ring on her left hand. She seemed to have picked up on it and spoke nervously. “My husband is still in the dark. I’d like to keep it that way.”
I shook my head. What a horrible mess this was.
Sandra emptied her super juice in one gulp. “How did Oliver die?” she asked.
“We were on a family getaway for the weekend in Limburg. They found him close to the holiday park at the bottom of a hill. It looks like he may have stumbled or fallen while walking and tumbled all the way down the slope,” I replied. I pictured him meeting his end and closed my eyes. Then I admonished myself and looked at Sandra. “He took a nasty fall and had a huge gash on the back of his head.”
Sandra covered her mouth with her hand. “How awful.”
I bobbed my head.
“How could he have landed so badly to the point of being killed?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I’m still waiting for the results of the forensic investigation, but in all likelihood he probably just had terrible luck.”
“Was it a steep slope?”
I thought for a moment. We’d gone for a stroll with the three of us earlier that Saturday in the holiday park and had passed the scene where Oliver died later that day. “Now that you ask,” I said, pressing my fingers to my lips, “actually, it doesn’t make sense for him to fall down there. The slope next to the path is clearly visible and the passage is quite wide.” I remembered that just after his death I’d found it odd that Oliver had taken a fall on that particular spot. He wasn’t the type of person for rash behaviour and the accident had happened in broad daylight. But the feeling that something didn’t quite add up had faded into the background in recent months. Now that Sandra had raised the subject, I realised again that the whole thing struck me as odd.
Sandra narrowed her eyes. “That’s bizarre,” she concluded.
I nodded.
We were silent for a while.
When I looked up, I noticed Sandra was sliding her arms into her jacket. “I hope I’ve been able to answer all of your questions,” she said.
“Yes, thank you,” I replied politely, but in reality our conversation had raised just as many new, unanswered ones.
She forced a smile and swung her handbag around her shoulder. “Take care.”
11
I waved one last time to Tim, who was looking at me through the window. The letters “Care Bears” cheerfully decorated the façade above his head. Tim’s day-care centre was located in a different neighbourhood to ours, which meant that I had to make a daily ten-minute detour by bike before continuing my journey to work. I put my foot on the pedal and cycled off to work in Amsterdam-West, which took me a good twenty minutes. While on the way home from work the streets were always
crowded with people, Amsterdam was still asleep around this time of the morning. It was my favourite moment of the day as it was the only time I had to myself nowadays. No child, no work, no responsibilities.
I passed a number of canal boats and cycled all the way down the Prinsengracht. I raced over the next intersection and ignored the loud honking of the angry driver coming from the right. In Amsterdam cyclists have right of way no matter what, Lindsey always joked.
I glanced at the watch that my mother had bought me for my birthday last year. It was ten to eight, leaving me ten minutes before my first consultation as a family doctor would start. Although I always had the intention to arrive well in time, lately I was struggling to manage, which was unusual for me.
When I arrived at the practice, I parked my bike next to that of my colleague Hans, with whom I’d been working for a few years. Our family practice offered medical guidance to people with a variety of ethnical backgrounds, an aspect of my work I took much joy in. Hans had started in the practice about eight years earlier than I had and therefore had just the right experience. When we’d met we’d felt an instant connection.
The first patient was already seated in the waiting area as I entered the practice somewhat out of breath. I rushed into my consulting room, opened the connecting door between Hans’s space and mine and called out “good morning.” Hans sat behind his desk, his hair all tousled. I smiled and wondered if he’d even bothered to comb it this morning. ‘He’s a good guy, honestly, but he’d never get lucky with me’, Lindsey had stated rather boldly when she’d met Hans once. I glanced at the framed picture of his wife, whom he’d met years ago at their Church, and their two children.
I wanted to retreat again, but Hans called after me. “Today it’s your turn to supervise Tom, remember?”
I closed my eyes for a moment and swore softly. I’d completely forgotten about that. “Of course I remember,” I lied.
Tom was a first-year medical student who was doing his residency with us. He had his own consulting room on the other side of the waiting area and was seeing patients by himself, but with every ailment that was more complicated than a bruised toe or a wart that needed to be taken care of, he presented his diagnosis to us. I still vividly recalled how insecure I felt back then. You study hard for several years, work your socks off during two years of rotations, only to find out you still don’t know anything.
Double Deceit Page 6
