The Wrong Girl by David Hewson

fit or set for combat. If I’d had the weapons and the clearance . . .’
    ‘Then you’d have died too.’
    He nodded.
    ‘Possibly. But if that had happened there would have been a reaction. Perhaps those eight thousand innocents would be alive. Or free to suffer another day.’
    The Kuypers were a military family. Lucas followed a long line of army officers going back more than a century and a half. That ended with Henk.
    ‘You did your duty,’ she insisted.
    ‘Did I?’ he replied with an uncharacteristic edge in his voice. ‘Henk was at boarding school when the publicity started. He had a terrible time. Me . . . I could cope. In a way I welcomed it. All that venom towards me . . . it was deserved.’
    She put a hand on his arm.
    ‘You mustn’t think that.’
    There was a moody expression on his face.
    ‘Really? Someone tried to abduct your daughter yesterday. Because of what I did . . . or didn’t do . . . nearly two decades ago. You think I can simply forget?’
    There were no words she could think of then.
    ‘And Henk seems to hate me more with every passing day,’ he added.
    Across the road the children were filing back into school. More lessons. Saskia would be safe in the comfy, private world Lucas’s money bought for them.
    He stared at her and there was a steely determination in his eyes that must have been there when he was in uniform.
    ‘Are you happy?’
    ‘No,’ she replied without thinking. ‘Are many people?’
    ‘You have every right to be,’ he said, and sounded almost cross. ‘We were. At Henk’s age I was a career officer. We had one enemy. The Russians. No one but a fool thought it would come to war. Then the Berlin Wall fell and everyone was cheering.’
    She smiled and patted his knee.
    ‘This is history, Lucas. The past. You should let it go.’
    ‘A friend of mine was there when the Wall collapsed. He told me everyone was delirious in Berlin. And then he said it would all get worse from now on. There’s no balance left to keep us in our place. We had sides back then. We knew where we stood. A decade later we were trying to stop ordinary men murdering their neighbours in the Balkans. Had Henk followed me into the army he’d have gone to Iraq, Afghanistan . . . God knows where.’
    He finished his coffee and crumpled the cup in his fist.
    ‘It wasn’t just me that failed. It was all of us. And every year we fall apart a little more.’ Lucas Kuyper’s face became stern and hard. ‘Terrorists in Amsterdam. Stealing children off the street.’
    ‘All the more reason not to blame yourself,’ she interrupted.
    ‘But Henk blames me. He hates me.’
    ‘Me too, I think.’
    ‘He’s no reason to hate you, Renata. I don’t believe that for a moment.’
    ‘Perhaps he doesn’t need one.’
    He sat back on the seat, closed his eyes, trying to find the words.
    ‘You’re thinking of leaving him?’
    ‘Is it that obvious?’ she asked.
    He nodded and said, ‘It is.’
    ‘Where would I go?’ she asked and both of them understood she was fishing for an invitation. His house was big and empty. She could imagine living there.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘We all make sacrifices. The price of a little joy is often a little pain. You’ve a beautiful daughter . . .’
    She found herself blinking back tears and wondered what he’d make of them.
    ‘All I want is my family. A normal family. A loving family. All I ever wanted . . .’
    The playground was deserted. It seemed desolate that way.
    ‘Besides, Saskia would never come,’ she said and knew that was true. ‘There’s a closeness between them. As if they share some . . . secret. I don’t understand it. All I know is I can’t get inside that. I never will.’
    ‘This is not a time for rash decisions.’
    ‘Rash?’ she asked. ‘Do you think this only happened yesterday? We’ve been struggling for years. Didn’t you notice?’
    She waited and waited. The only answer was an unfamiliar ringtone from her bag.