I could tell he was grinning. I pictured his sparkling eyes and lopsided grin, the way his chipped right tooth always snagged on his bottom lip – the legacy of an adolescent encounter with a 40-pound scuba tank. I tried to remember when we’d last spoken. It must have been around four years ago. He’d called to invite me to a school reunion which I’d declined to attend, although I could have easily flown from London, where I was based, to Amsterdam and arranged a hire car. The reunion was to be held in the college gymnasium of our old high school on the Dutch mainland. When I’d lived on Texel, the student population was so insignificant that the local government didn’t feel they could justify paying a teacher. Instead, each morning Bram and I had taken the ferry together, crossing the deep, cold waters of the Marsdiep, the tidal race that thundered between Texel and the coastal village Den Hoorn, providing the only access to the island except by air.

At sixteen, Bram had towered over the sixth-form boys and some of the teachers, too. He was smart, a joker, always ready to laugh at his own expense. In the summer holidays, he could be found in the backroom of the scuba-diving shop his father owned, filling air tanks and washing wetsuits and kitting out the tourists with snorkels and masks. We’d lost touch a bit after I moved away, eventually reconnecting in our mid-twenties when Bram tracked me down via the staff website of the V&A Museum where I was working. He’d sent a cautious email, wanting to know if I remembered him. He had recently opened a pizza shop in Den Burg with his brother and was quick to reassure me he understood if I preferred not to reply. It might be too painful, after everything I’d been through. But I’d replied almost at once. Of course I remember you! I’d written, before going on to describe my work sourcing a series of traditional masque gowns to be displayed alongside the museum’s extensive collection of 17th-century Stuart furniture.