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      For Patrick

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      Many thanks to Ad, Sander, Thijs, Marieke, the World Editions and the De Geus family. To Passa Porta for providing me with a pleasant and quiet place to work at the right moment. To Henk for hoppakee, the word that hung above my computer and kept me going. To my loving parents, Sylvia and Gerard, for unfailing support and pots of soup. To David, for his loving translation. And thanks to my own sweet Suus, without whom this book would never have seen the light of day.

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      I

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      1

      My tongue felt like it was crawling with ants. My feet were heavy. I was standing at the back door in my swimming trunks, towel around my neck. Mum had come into the kitchen, but she hadn’t looked at me yet. ‘There you are,’ she said without raising her head as she lifted the lid off the pot. She ladled my bowl full of soup, then hers.

      She dipped a finger into my soup and stirred. ‘Just right. Tuck in.’ I sat down on my chair and stared at the steam rising sluggishly from my bowl. ‘Don’t leave too much for Dad. If he’d wanted a decent helping, he should’ve been back on time.’ Spooning soup into her mouth, she returned to her sewing machine in the living room. ‘Just finishing this off. Won’t be long.’

      My hands lay motionless on the table. Inside they were shaking. I could hear the scraping of gulls sharpening their beaks on the gutter above the window. I knew I should be eating my soup, but it was all I could do to take hold of the spoon.

      I took a gulp of water from my glass. It felt like I was choking. I gagged and a little of what I sicked up disappeared into my soup. I wiped away what had landed next to the bowl with a furtive sweep of my hand. Mum hadn’t noticed. She was leaning forward in her chair, staring intently at the rattling needle of her sewing machine, only letting up to see if she was still going in a straight line.

      After a few minutes, Mum came back into the kitchen to fetch the Worcester sauce from the spice rack. She rested her hips against the sink and leaned toward the window.

      ‘Taking his own sweet time again.’ My heart wanted to leap out of my chest. I stuck the empty spoon in my mouth. ‘Don’t take after your father,’ she smiled. ‘You can never count on a man like that.’ Before I could answer, the sewing machine had started rattling again.

      The harder I bit down on my tongue, the more the ants prickled. Dusk made a mirror of the window. I knew it held my reflection, but I couldn’t bring myself to look. Mum went over to the bin, trod on the pedal, and let a few scraps of material fall from her hand.

      ‘Aren’t you going to eat anything?’

      I gave a jerky shrug.

      ‘Nothing to say for yourself?’

      ‘I’ve had enough,’ I said.

      ‘Well, that wasn’t much.’

      ‘Sorry.’

      ‘Don’t come crying like a baby that you want something else later.’ She tipped my soup back into the pot, placed my bowl next to hers by the sink, and left the pot and one bowl on the table for Dad. She caught me looking at them. ‘That father of yours can heat up his own soup.’ When she called him ‘that father of yours’, it meant he’d done something he needed to make up for. She rubbed dark-brown stripes across the table with a damp cloth.

      ‘He swam away.’ The words stumbled out of my mouth.

      ‘Hmm?’

      ‘Dad swam away.’

      ‘“Swam away”?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘Dunno.’

      She looked at me, puzzled. ‘Where to?’

      I shrugged.

      ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

      Again, I shrugged.

      ‘But you must know if he said something.’

      ‘I don’t think he said anything.’

      She cupped her hands around her eyes and put her face to the window.

      ‘Did

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