‘You never asked. Besides, I wasn’t sure it was my place. But since you’re going back, I thought it best to warn you. If he’s still there, you’ll probably run into him. Texel isn’t a big place. When are you planning on coming back to Sydney?’

It was my turn to shrug. ‘I’ll stay as long as I’m needed. Once the items are stabilised, there’ll be some diplomatic stuff to negotiate with the Dutch government. The media will probably be involved, which will require some careful handling.’

She looked suddenly worried. ‘I’m glad you’re going. But what if there’s an accident? A break-in?’

Her voice was edged with panic, but I was wise to her ways. Her anxiety was mostly performative – an unsubtle device designed to trap me into staying home. There was no malice attached to her behaviour. She couldn’t help herself.

‘You’ll be fine,’ I said, trying to make my voice as soothing as possible. ‘Call a friend, if you’re worried. Call Margaret; she’s supposed to be your best friend. You managed on your own for years when I lived in London.’

‘That’s because you were only ever a phone call away. The reception’s probably terrible on Texel. It took weeks sometimes for your mother to reply to my emails.’

‘She was probably too busy flirting with Gerrit,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand why two people who were clearly miserable together didn’t just get divorced.’

Marieke looked pained. ‘It was a different time. And there was you…’ She touched my arm gently and I didn’t react, even though my first instinct was to pull away. ‘Isn’t it time you let go of all those old hurts and just listened to me for once?’

Her gaze was pleading. I glanced away from her towards the bookshelves filled with beach-worn paperbacks, their spines bowed, their covers bleached from prolonged exposure to the noonday sun. Those books – mostly historical romances – had been my companions when I first arrived in Sydney. Although I’d loved the stories themselves, I often found myself perusing the badly Photoshopped images of medieval knights and coquettish Victorian mistresses on the covers, searching for hidden meanings about the lives of the characters between the pages. Only later did I realise it was the clothes themselves I found so irresistibly alluring. Clothing held the key to thousands of years of human history, everyone from anointed kings and queens to humble washerwomen and midwives. It was my duty to follow the clues, wherever they led.

3

Anna

Amsterdam, 1651