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I spent my wedding night on an airbed in the living room. I could understand why—after all, Joost was my friend.

André turned up at the wedding in the brand-new Porsche. He had brought a blond girlfriend with him who seemed to come from a different universe. André didn’t say much, not even to his parents. There were scores of people he knew, but he moved through the company like a ghost. He wore a white suit and snakeskin shoes. When he left, he hugged me and said: ‘Sorry, Bart.’ For a long time those were the last words I heard from his mouth.

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VIII

If you walk from the Groenmarkt to the Marspoortstraat in Zutphen, after a couple of hundred metres you reach the river. On the other side are the river floodplains, which flood in winter and sometimes freeze over so that you can skate.

One warm July evening in 1980, David, André, and I were sitting on a low wall on the town side, looking out over the water. Joost was missing, as he’d gone to a summer camp for young astronomers in Drenthe.