Girl in the Blue Coat(72)

The shelf always squeaks when the latch is open. I replay the sentence again in my mind, searching for a way that it could mean something different from what I know it means. Shelf. He didn’t say “pantry door.” He specifically said “shelf.” He would have to know that the shelf swung open with a latch. Always. As in, multiple times. As in, he knows the workings of that hidden, rusty shelf.

“Hanneke, I thought you said I should leave.” He’s looking at me, confused.

“You know about the hiding space.” My voice comes out in an uneven whisper. “Christoffel?” He starts to shake his head, but it’s too late. A light has flickered in his eyes. “What do you know about it, Christoffel?” I ask softly.

“I don’t know anything. Please let’s not talk about this. Please just let me go.”

He reaches for the doorknob again, but I move in front of it. “I can’t let you go. You know that.”

“Hanneke, please leave this.” His voice is so quiet I can barely make it out.

Outside I hear someone selling an evening newspaper, and the gritty, swishing sound of a broom over cobblestones. Life is going on and on, and I’m in here with a soft-faced boy who is drained of all color. “Christoffel, it’s just the two of us in here. No matter what you tell me, good or bad, I can’t ever call the police or talk to anybody but Mrs. Janssen about it. But please, please, just tell me: How did you know there was a space behind the pantry?”

Outside the sweeper has landed on something metal, maybe a coin. Christoffel stares at his thumb, at a vicious hangnail rubbed red from repeated worrying. He’s an inch or two taller than me, but it’s gangly height, the height of a recent growth spurt.

“I didn’t know about—about her,” he says. “Not at first. I swear, I didn’t know at first. Usually when I’m here, Mrs. Janssen is in the room with me, and we’re talking or making noise that would cover up sounds from the pantry.”

“But not all the time?”

“One time I was delivering some things. Mrs. Janssen couldn’t find her pocketbook. She went upstairs to look for it, and she was gone for a long time, and down here it was quiet. And I heard something. A squeak.”

“Did you go to see what it was?” That would be so like helpful Christoffel, to hear a rusty hinge and decide to investigate it, repair it.

“I didn’t have to. I heard the squeak, and then she came out of the cupboard.”

Another person who saw her. Another person who knew she existed. Christoffel’s face has a touch of wonder to it, as he remembers that moment. How strange it must have been for him, to be standing in the kitchen and have a girl emerge from the pantry. “She recognized my voice,” Christoffel continues. “She said she’d just been waiting for an opportunity when Mrs. Janssen wasn’t around.”

She recognized. It’s like my brain can’t take in everything Christoffel is saying at once, so it latches on to loose phrases, here or there. Recognize is an interesting word. It would have made more sense for Christoffel to say “heard.” We recognize the things that are already familiar to us.

“You knew her,” I say, and as I’m formulating the words, I decide who “her” really was. “You knew Amalia.”

“How did you know her name?”

“How did you?”

“We went to school together. The three of us, we grew up together. Me, Amalia, and—” Christoffel leaves a space where the name should go, one that I can’t resist filling.

“And Mirjam.”

“And Mirjam,” he whispers. Then Christoffel does something I didn’t expect at all and hadn’t been prepared for. He sinks to the floor, sliding down along the wall. He balls his fists in front of his eyes, and he begins to cry. Not just silent tears: fat, noisy tears like a little boy.

I drop to my knees next to him. This is pain I recognize. “Christoffel, did you—did you love Mirjam?”

His throat is hoarse; he’s barely whispering. “She didn’t seem to notice me that way; she treated me like a brother. I assumed she didn’t like me. Last year she told me it wasn’t that she didn’t like me, it was that Amalia did. She said Amalia liked me first, and Mirjam didn’t want to betray her. I knew deep down, all along, I guess. Amalia started getting nervous around me. She got this laugh—a giggle, sort of. But I never thought of her as more than a friend.”

“You’re T. Not Tobias. You.” Christoffel looks up at me, confused. “I found a letter,” I explain. “It mentioned a boy whose name she abbreviated as T. It was a boy she liked.”

Those stupid English princesses. The letter wasn’t from Mirjam to Amalia, something she never got a chance to send. The letter was from Amalia to Mirjam, something Mirjam was rereading in class.

“My nickname,” Christoffel says. “It’s dumb. I don’t even remember when I got it. I guess that I must have been T.”

Earlier, I thought Christoffel’s friends at the ferry were all calling him Mr. Great. That’s what Tof means: “Great.” “Cool.” But they weren’t calling him that—they were calling him Tof, his nickname, from the middle of Christoffel.

“How many times did you see Amalia in the pantry?”

“Just twice. The second time I came, she waited until Mrs. Janssen was gone again, and then she said there had been a notice in the newspaper and that she needed my help to escape.”