“Fricke—”

The girl was already moving toward the door. She gave Gini one last, sneering glance.

“If you’re there, fine. If you’re not—who cares… You reporters are all crap anyway. When Anneke first disappeared, they were all on the doorstep, they phoned all the time. Now that she’s dead—what happens? Nothing. They’ve all gone on to the next fucking tragedy.”

She brought out the two expletives with some care. Gini did not react to them or to her comments, and this seemed to disappoint her. She left the room.

Gini remained only a short while longer with Mrs. van der Leyden. Yes, she learned, Anneke had kept a diary and address book, but she had taken them to England, and they had never been found; the police had already been through all her other personal papers, which had provided no information, and which were now packed away. No, there had never been any hint of serious unhappiness or disturbance on Anneke’s part. She was a contented, well-adjusted girl with nice friends from good families.

This portrait did not convince Gini, and she knew it did not truly convince Anneke’s mother either; that was why she stressed its accuracy so desperately and at such length. She continued to speak in this way as she led Gini down the stairs and across the hall. There, her hand on the front door, she abruptly stopped. “Sometimes she would have these little moods, of course,” she went on, pleading in her eyes. “As all teenagers do, as Fricke does. It’s nothing. It passes. It’s part of growing up. She knew how much we loved her. She loved her family in return.”

Gini could hear the agonized unspoken questions, and read them in her eyes. They were the same questions Mina’s parents had not dared to voice to her the previous night: What didn’t we see, how did we fail her, where did we go wrong?

“Please. Take the photograph. Keep it. It’s yours.”

Erica van der Leyden pressed the picture of Anneke into Gini’s hands. Her face crumpled, became lax with grief.

“I loved her,” she said with sudden passion. “I loved her so much. If you don’t have children, you can’t understand. I love my husband, of course—we’ve been married many years, and I would never tell him this… But the way I love him, it’s nothing, nothing compared to the way I love my daughters. Is that terrible? I don’t care. It’s true. If I had to sacrifice him for them, I wouldn’t hesitate, not for one second. Him, myself, this house, everything we possess—it’s all meaningless, I’d abandon it all tomorrow, I’d kill to bring her back—”

“Please,” Gini began.

“—that’s what it means to be a mother. No man on earth can ever feel like that. Such desperate desperate love. Oh, dear merciful God…”

She was shuddering from head to foot. She covered her face with her hands, then suddenly gripped Gini hard, forcing her to look up at her face.