“You did know her, though? Dark hair? Petite? She might have worn a bright blue coat?”
Judith bites her lip. “I remember when she got that coat. She tripped and caught her old one on a rusty piece of fence and ripped a big chunk out of it. Ripped a chunk out of her knee, too. I remember thinking she was going to have a scar for life. She came back a few days later with stitches and the new coat. It was raining that morning and she asked me if she could come inside before the doors opened so it wouldn’t get too wet.”
“What else do you remember about her?” I can barely get out the words. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I didn’t expect to find anyone else who knew her. Some twisted part of me maybe believed that Mirjam Roodveldt was a specter created by Mrs. Janssen. But she is real.
“Why do you care so much about her?” Judith looks at me shrewdly. “Is she a friend?”
“No. I’m—I’m being paid to find her.” It’s technically the truth, and right now it seems easier than explaining everything else, about me, and Bas, about how finding Mirjam feels like a task that will put order to the world. I’m still embarrassed by how vulnerable I was in front of Judith when I met her at the school.
“Just her?” Judith looks skeptical. “You’re here because you’re looking for just one person?”
“Please, do you remember anything else?”
Judith sighs. “Not a lot. She was beautiful; I think she had a lot of admirers.”
“Anyone she was particularly close with? Was there anyone she might have gone to, or told where she was going into hiding?”
“I’m just a secretary. I only talked to the students if they came in late and needed a pass or something else like that. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t know anything else?”
“I did bring some things for you, though I doubt they’ll be of any help.” She leans over to her handbag and pulls out a rectangular white envelope, unaddressed and unsealed. “Just some old school assignments from her desk. Sometimes students disappear without having a chance to clean out their books or papers. I always think, just in case some of them came back… In any case, I went through my collection, and this is what we had of Mirjam’s.”
She hands me the envelope, and I quickly thumb through the contents. The top three pages are all math assignments, and the next two are biology quizzes. No photographs, nothing that looks immediately useful. I try to hide my disappointment; it was kind of Judith to bring this for me, and I don’t want to seem more petulant than I already did earlier in the meeting.
“Ollie says you have connections,” Judith says.
“It depends on what you mean by connections.”
“Ollie says you can find things. We need more vendors we can trust, and we need people who can introduce us to them.”
“That’s not why I came here,” I say.
“I see.” She’s staring at me evenly. It takes work for me not to return her gaze, to instead focus on Mirjam’s schoolwork in my lap. Before I can look more closely at the other papers, Ollie puts his hand on my shoulder, and I look up in relief.
“It’s almost curfew. I’ll walk you home; Judith and Willem and Sanne will follow in a few minutes.”
Judith stands to put on her scarf.
“Thank you,” I say formally. “For trying to help me.”
She pauses. “My cousin might have known Mirjam better. She doesn’t come to these meetings, because she’s just a kid, but she helps us sometimes. She’s still a pupil at the school. I could arrange a meeting with her. Possibly.”
“Please,” I say greedily. “Should I come to the school tomorrow morning?” I’m sure I can find an errand for Mr. Kreuk that will require me to be in that neighborhood.
“Come to the Schouwburg in the afternoon. We’ll both be volunteering there. Meet me outside. You can see what we’re all about.”
I don’t want to see what they’re all about, and Judith knows that. It’s why she suggested the Schouwburg to begin with. Judith might have offered to help me further, but it came with a price.
“Ready?” Ollie asks me.
I tuck Judith’s envelope into the waistband of my skirt so I won’t have to carry it visibly down the street.
“Be careful,” Ollie calls out to Judith and Willem.
Willem calls back, “Be safe.”
EIGHT
You had no right.”
“No right to what?” Ollie scans both sides of the street before pulling me to the left, closing the door behind him.
“You’re in the resistance.” I don’t bother to phrase it as a question. Ollie walks steadily ahead, but his shoulders tense at my statement. It’s a sullen, vindictive cold outside, colder than it’s been in months, and my breath vaporizes as we hurry along the canal.
“We don’t have to talk about this now.”