Little Sister by David Hewson Read Free Book Online Page A

what came next.
    The bird retreated tail first through the shattered glass, shaking its head, back into the open green channel.
    There was something in its beak. Both men stared, wanting to make sure of what they saw.
    ‘Them’s men’s underpants,’ Willy said. ‘He’s thinking it’s for a nest.’
    His brother nodded.
    ‘I’ll get the tractor.’

11
    The three-storey terrace house in Vinkenstraat was quiet at the front. But their room was at the rear and overlooked a coffee shop and kebab bar in the neighbouring tourist
thoroughfare of Haarlemmerstraat. From the grubby window, across a soot-stained courtyard, they could see drowsy people smoking in a tiny, shady room. Quiet, tired-looking foreigners laboured in a
kitchen behind the restaurant. People came and went all the time.
    In Marken they always felt close to home. There was the grey still water, the marine air, the squawks of gulls, ship’s horns across the lake. Here their senses were assaulted by unwanted
and unfamiliar sensations. Even with the window closed it was impossible to escape the stink of traffic fumes, cooking and an occasional exotic waft of what had to be dope smoke, not that they
could be certain. The noise – voices, car horns, music, distant trains – was constant. Their new short hair, black for Mia, purple-red for Kim, so exciting the night before, now felt
odd and wrong.
    In the middle of the night Kim had got up and washed off the temporary tattoo. Then her sister did the same. After that the two of them sat on Kim’s single bed, hugging each other for an
hour. Not crying. Not afraid. Just drained of everything.
    For years they’d dreamed of freedom and what it might bring. Now the moment was upon them it seemed a small and useless commodity. Marken possessed a kind of comfort in the daily routines,
the sanitized, hands-off care the institution provided, the knowledge that their entire world was constrained by that high-security fence with its video cameras posted around, always watching,
always recording.
    Here they seemed unobserved. Anonymous. It was almost as if they didn’t exist at all.
    At a quarter past eight there’d been a knock on the door. Vera, the Englishwoman, stood there, gasping from the effort of climbing the steep staircase. Her lined face no longer seemed the
colour of walnut, more that of a dull and fading parchment. Still she smiled the way the nurses did back in Marken. Genial but in control.
    There was a tray in her trembling hands, two cups of coffee on it, two glasses of orange juice, two pieces of cake.
    ‘Best you have breakfast in your room, girls,’ she said in English. ‘I’ve got to go and see some people. You don’t want to be wandering outside without
me.’
    Mia took the tray and asked why.
    ‘Because,’ Vera said. ‘I may be a while. I’d like you both to stay here until I get back. I’ll bring us a nice lunch. We’ll have a little chat. OK?’
    It was almost nine when the woman left. Gone eleven when she returned. They used the time to explore. The house was narrow but so tall the wooden staircase sloped perilously from floor to floor.
They had a cramped, scruffy bathroom next to them. The Englishwoman seemed to occupy all of the floor below. The ground was given over to a kitchen, a living room with a TV set, a music centre and
computer, and a dining room with a table, four chairs around it, a single window looking out onto the courtyard where an old refrigerator was slowly rotting away.
    Vera had locked the heavy front door behind her. They wandered around, tried the computer, couldn’t guess the password, and hunted for a spare set of keys without success.
    Then Kim remembered something and they clambered up the staircase, using their hands and feet like children, and went back to the bedroom to search for the phones they’d brought from
Marken. Two. One for each of them. Both were missing.
    ‘They’ve got to be here somewhere,’ Kim insisted, going through the