Page 52

Then: "I'm glad," he says. Quietly. "That matters to me too. More than…” He lets the sentence settle. "Very much."

My mother looks at him.

"Good," she says. And refills his glass.

My father picks up his fork again. "The infrastructure question," he says to Jan. "You mentioned project financing. I've been thinking about what you said. There's a bridge outside Rotterdam…”

And they are off again.

I look at my mother across the table.

She looks back.

The look.

I look at my stamppot.

After lunch my father and Jan are in the sitting room.

I am in the kitchen with my mother, helping clear up, which is our language — the kitchen is where we talk, it has always been the kitchen, the domestic rhythm of it making things easier to say.

She hands me a dish and I dry it.

"He's good," she says. Not a question.

"Yes," I say.

"Careful," she says. "With himself. With you."

I look at the dish. "Yes."

She takes it back, puts it away. "I wasn't sure, when you told me." She picks up another dish. "Not about him… I didn't know him. About you. Whether you knew what you were doing."

"I wasn't sure either," I say. "For a while."

"And now."

I look at the kitchen window. The Haarlem garden, the Saturday afternoon light, a day that has gone well.

"Now I'm certain," I say. "About him. About this."

I think about lunch. About somewhere between dessert and coffee, I noticed his shoulders had dropped. He hadn't realised it. He was talking to my father about something, entirely in it, and the careful held quality he'd arrived with was simply gone. He'd stopped preparing. He was just there.

My mother is quiet for a moment. Then she hands me another dish and says, in the tone she uses when something is both obvious and worth saying: "He refilled your cup," she says. "At the table. Before you'd noticed it was empty. Without looking at you." The slight smile. "He just — reached over and refilled it. Like he does it without thinking."

I look at her.

"A man who notices your cup is empty before you do," she says, "is a man who is paying attention."

I look at the window.

"I know," I say.

She puts her hand on my arm briefly, just that, a moment, and then picks up the next dish.

— — —

On the train back Jan is beside me. The Haarlem to Amsterdam light, the flat landscape, the early evening coming in.