Page 12 of The Expat Affair
The Nine Streets are three square blocks lined with boutiques and cafés smack in the city center. The sidewalks are packed despite the cold, with people jamming the doorways and in snaking lines outside of specialty food shops offering up everything from bubble tea to hand-dipped stroopwafels to overpriced french fries smothered with Parmesan.
I’m seated away from the fray, wedged between a giant potted Buxus and a chalkboard sign on a sidewalk terrace, freezing my ass off and trying not to think about how, yet again, I’m trailing another human around town.
Not Rayna this time but Thomas, who’s been in the store across the street for—I check my phone—going on twelve minutes now. Rive Gauche, according to the sign painted on the window, which sells a mix of heavily curated clothing and trendy home decor, candles and vases and lacquered trays topped with vintage carafes and hung with cheap jewelry. Gold-plated chains, bracelets made with colorful beads, fake pearls of every shape and color. The best thing I can say about it is at least it’s not lingerie.
Not that Thomas would ever be so cliché, but I also never thought he’d be the type to have an affair. I’ve thought about it a lot since seeing him outside that hotel, and really, I can’t come up with another explanation. Especially since he turned off location sharing for the twenty-four hours he was supposedly in Antwerp, and when yesterday I texted to ask how things were going at the conference, he said that everyone loved his speech. And then suddenly this morning, his dot reappeared, which is why I’m sitting here now.
Also suspicious is the way he’s dressed, in a sweater and faded jeans he must have dragged from the very back of his closet, under a peacoat I thought he threw away ages ago. Definitely not what he had on when he left the house this morning. A disguise, then, a ploy to make him look very much not like himself.
Meanwhile, I’m dressed like everyone else in this part of town, in generic jeans and a dark puffy coat, a new pair of sunglasses covering my face. They’re much like the kind of plastic things I used to own, purchased at a discount store between Sem’s school and here for a whole five euros. The glasses sit crooked on my nose, and it feels silly to be wearing shades on a day when the sun is muted at best, but I need a disguise and Gucci would never make a pair this tacky.
A woman’s voice floats from across the street. “? I thought that was you.”
Shit. Not that good of a disguise after all, and what are the chances? Running into a neighbor all the way here, a good dozen tram stops into the thickest part of the city. Especially this neighbor, the neighbor Thomas refers to as de prater—the talker—because neither of us can ever remember her name. Vittoria? Francesca? Giada? The only thing I know for sure it that it’s very Italian, and this is hitting too close to home.
I look up with a smile, my voice going unnaturally bright. “Hi! What are you doing all the way over here?”
“Oh, just a bit of shopping. It’s Matteo’s birthday next week, and he’s so impossible to shop for. I bought him a pair of shoes, which more likely than not he’ll take back.”
She holds up a bag from a department store nearby, hooked over a manicured finger. “You?”
Her gaze dips to the empty chair next to me, and I scramble for an excuse that won’t prompt her to sink onto it.
“I’m shopping, too, but for a new speech therapist for Semmy since his is retiring. I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes with someone who comes highly recommended, but she’s all the way over in the Red Light, and I’m really not looking to make that trek every week. I’d prefer to stay closer to home.”
Immediately, I regret involving my son in the lie. Sem’s speech pathologist is fantastic, and nowhere near retirement age. What if this woman runs into Thomas or Martina? She’ll definitely bring it up, and I’ll have to come up with a cover. I should have just told her I was shopping, too, and left it at that.
De prater launches a long-winded comparison of the shopping in Amsterdam versus her beloved Milan, living up to her nickname. I smile and nod and pretend to listen, but I’m distracted by sudden movement across the street. A flock of noisy females bursts out the door of Rive Gauche, filing down the sidewalk with a flurry of excited chatter, and thanks to nosy neighbor here, I don’t get a good look at any of them.
At least it’s not Thomas who makes his escape. I spot him through the front window, lingering behind a pretty sales associate reaching into the display. She untangles a jumble of necklaces on a padded bust, then pulls out a single chain, long and delicate and shiny. She holds it up for him to see, and he cradles the charm in his palm, leaning in to inspect it. He says something to the woman and she laughs. He hands the necklace back, and they disappear deeper into the store.
“. . . is really getting hit hard lately.”
There’s an awkward silence as Bianca—her name comes to me in a flash—waits for me to jump in on whatever she just said. She raises her brows, and her perfectly painted lips spread into an awkward smile.
“I’m sorry,”
I say, shaking my head. “I think I missed the first part.”
“I said, the news I read this morning said the police are no closer to finding the killer than they were days ago, and now they’re saying more diamonds are missing. Millions of dollars’ worth. Poor Thomas, he’s really getting hit hard lately, isn’t he?”
My gaze flits to the glass door across the street. If he comes out now, my entire cover will be blown.
And yet I can’t help but ask, “Hit hard how?”
“The news made it sound like this dead employee was involved in last summer’s theft. Those big stones that were taken from the vault, I mean. I can’t remember what they were called.”
“The Cullinans.”
“That’s right, the Cullinans. Is that why that man is dead, because the killer wanted them?”
I think about how to answer this, because Thomas was right. Even if he can manage to spin another believable story, it’s already too late for people like de prater. She’s already connected the theft of the Cullinans to Xander and the missing diamonds. She already thinks they’re the same stones, which . . . could it be possible? Thomas fired Xander. He accused him of theft. It’s not inconceivable to think Xander stole more than just some extra stones tossed in the Asian shipments. I happen to know he wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy person.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot movement behind the glass. I tap my phone to check the time. “Oh, shoot. Lovely running into you, but I’ve got to run. I’m about to be late for my appointment.”
“Want to grab lunch sometime soon? I could do next week.”
“Sure. Next week works.”
I pull a ten from my bag and wedge it under my empty coffee cup, pushing to a stand.
“I’ll call you,”
Bianca says, and with a quick hug goodbye, continues on down the street.
As soon as she’s gone, I fall back onto my chair, my gaze glued to the door. I don’t care about the Cullinans or any other missing diamonds. I give zero shits about whatever story Thomas has spun to differentiate between the two. I only care about what my husband is doing in a store like Rive Gauche. I’ll sit here all day if I have to. I have absolutely nothing better to do.
It’s ironic, really. The kind of woman who stays in a €1000 room at the Conservatorium Hotel would expect more from a Prins than a cheap trinket of plated gold, and Thomas would give it to her, I know this for a fact. I’d known him for all of five minutes before he started tossing diamonds my way. Solitaire studs, a chain set with dozens of bezel-set stones, blingy bracelets and dangly earrings and diamond-encrusted pendants big as a silver dollar. Rive Gauche is no House of Prins, for crap’s sake. Whoever this woman is, I hope that necklace turns her skin green.
A few minutes later, he steps out the door, a tiny bag clutched in a fist. I hold my breath as he pauses on the sidewalk, turning left, then right, then left again. This is a man who grew up in this city, who except for the time he spent in boarding schools and business schools and in California getting his gemology degree, has lived here all his life. He’s roamed these streets since he was a child and still he gets turned around. Normally, this would make me laugh, but not today. Today I shrink behind the Buxus bush and pray he doesn’t spot me sitting here, watching him.
He settles on a direction and takes off down the sidewalk, and I wait until he’s turned the corner onto the Prinsengracht before I push to a stand. Thomas is headed in the direction of the Westermarkt; I’m guessing either to the tram stops or the taxi stand. I hurry down the sidewalk, determined not to lose him.
Just past the Pulitzer Hotel, he stops dead. He whirls around and I freeze, but he’s not looking at me, standing half a football field away. He’s checking for traffic on the road. He waits to let a car pass then jogs across the street to a row of parked bikes at the water’s edge, stopping at one that looks like it’s been there awhile.
I frown, pressing my body to the building.
He hangs the bag on a handlebar of an old, rusty Gazelle, then keeps moving up the street, and now I’m more confused than ever. What kind of woman stays at the Conservatorium but rides an old, rusty Gazelle? I look back up the street, watching that ugly peacoat disappear into the crowd, a swarm of pedestrians and tourists heading to the Anne Frank House further up the street.
As soon as he’s out of sight, I jog across the street and pluck the bag from the bike.
It’s the necklace I watched him pick out through the glass, an upside-down heart decorated with tiny white stones dangling from a paperclip chain. Stones that are paste, and not even good paste. This is the type of necklace you’d give to a child—though the twins wouldn’t be caught dead in this cheap trinket. According to the receipt, Thomas paid a whopping €28.
I turn and stare up the street, the necklace still tangled around my fingers, half expecting to see . . . what? The owner of this bike? Why leave the necklace, even a cheap one, hanging on a bike for anyone to swipe? None of this makes any sense.
An icy wind sweeps up the canal, tingling the tips of my ears and fingers. Whatever the answers are, I’m not going to find them here, freezing my ass off on the side of the street. It’s a mystery to solve later, at home, when Sem is at school or playing outside, when Thomas is at work and Martina at the market, shopping for ingredients for dinner.
Because this necklace can’t be the only clue. There’s got to be more hiding in his desk, maybe, or tucked somewhere deep in a pocket. Maybe it’s a mistake, but I can’t bear staring down the evidence of my husband’s betrayal for another second. I toss it all—the box, the bag, the cheap costume necklace, and those ridiculous sunglasses—into the canal.
All I need is a few moments in the house alone.