Girl in the Blue Coat(30)

She says this incredulously, like there’s something strange about domestic ambitions, but the description only makes me ache for Mirjam. I know what it’s like, to have modest, simple wishes, and then have even those taken away from you.

“Were you friends?”

Mina pauses. “The school wasn’t big, so you knew everyone in it. I invited her to my birthday last year because my parents made me invite all the girls. I can’t even remember if she came. I don’t think I’d say we were really friends. She was more popular than me.”

“Are there pictures from your party?”

“My camera was broken then. I got a brand-new one for my birthday, but the film I asked for was special and it hadn’t arrived yet. Ursie knew Mirjam better. Ursie and Zef, those were her better friends at school.”

“Where can I find Ursie and Zef?”

Mina looks at me curiously. “Gone. Ursie left school right before Mirjam, and Zef right after. I saw Ursie here at the Schouwburg, before her family’s transport.”

Mirjam’s entire class, disappeared one by one, all of them in hiding or taken through that theater. This is all completely insane, and every new piece of information only compounds the insanity. I’m trying to find a girl who vanished from a closed house. Who cannot be reported missing, because if the police found her, it would be worse for her than if they’d never gone looking at all. In which the last people to see her before she appeared at Mrs. Janssen’s are all dead. And in which her friends, the only living people who might be able to guess where she might have been likely to go, are now gone themselves.

“Was there a girl in your class named Elizabeth? Or Margaret? Even not in your year, but anywhere in the school?”

Mina frowns. “No, I don’t think so.”

“It’s just—” I shift aside the heavy bag Mina has given me, pulling the paper from my pocket. “In Mirjam’s things, I found this. It’s a letter to an Elizabeth from a Margaret. I’m trying to figure out who it belongs to or how it got there.”

Mina leans over, scans the letter, and laughs.

“What?”

“It’s Amalia,” she says.

“Who is?”

“Mirjam’s best friend. Mirjam knew her from her other school, before all the Jews were forced to come to the Lyceum. She was always writing her notes in class. A few times she got in trouble and had to read them out loud.”

“But her name was Amalia? Not Elizabeth?”

“Mirjam said they liked to joke that they were like sisters. And royalty. To be honest—and I feel badly saying this—she was a little irritating about it.”

“Margaret and Elizabeth. The English princesses.” The letter makes sense now. Mirjam must have written it to Amalia in class one day, but was forced into hiding before she could send it.

“Do you know where Amalia lives? Or her last name? Do you know how I can find her?”

Mina bends over to adjust the baby’s blankets again. “I don’t know her last name,” Mina says. “And I don’t think she lives in Amsterdam anymore. She wasn’t Jewish. Mirjam said Amalia’s parents were going to send her out of the city.”

“Where?” I ask.

Mina shrugs. “Somewhere near Den Haag? Not Scheveningen, where the prison is, but what’s the littler beach?”

“Kijkduin?” I guess.

“That’s right. Mirjam showed us a postcard once of Amalia’s aunt’s hotel—some sea-green monstrosity she owned in Kijkduin. Let me see the letter again.”

She strains her neck to read the tiny writing as we bump along the sidewalk. “Hmm. T might be—” She breaks off, bending over to dislodge a pebble from the wheel.

“You know who T is? A boy Mirjam might have liked?”

“It might be Tobias?”

Tobias. Tobias. “Was he Mirjam’s boyfriend?”

“Tobias Rosen was everyone’s boyfriend, in our dreams. The handsomest boy in school. Last week he smiled at me, and I’m still half blind from the glow.”

“Last week?” My ears prick up. “He’s still around, then?”

“Or was until a few days ago, at least. He’s been out, but I heard he was just sick. His father is a dentist; that’s about all I know about him personally. He was also too popular.”

“Do you think he liked Mirjam back?”

“Someone did send Mirjam flowers on her birthday. The florist brought them to the school yard before class, and Mirjam had to carry them into the building. She was the deepest shade of pink. The flowers didn’t have a card on them, but all of us were teasing her about them except for Tobias. He was staring straight at his desk. If he comes back to school, do you want me to ask him for you?”

“Ask him if he’ll meet with me. That would be even better.”

“All right. Maybe I could talk to other classmates, too. It would be nice if you could come back and visit sometime. I don’t have very many friends left.” She peers at me through dark lashes. “Do you think you could? Oh wait!”

She stops the carriage so abruptly I nearly trip over it.

“We’re here,” she says. I haven’t been paying attention to our route, but we’ve walked a good distance, and now we’re near Amsterdam Centraal, the main train station.