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We didn’t go to her place. I went into Joost or André’s living room as naturally as our own, and I plundered David’s parents’ fridge without problems. The Sweet Lady Jane was common ground, although Madame Olga grumbled.

But we never went to Laura’s, even though she lived near André and me. ‘My parents prefer not,’ she said. Probably her parents were not even aware of our existence. She didn’t tell us how she managed to get away in the evenings when we went out, or to come swimming or skating or just hanging around with us on Saturdays.

When you saw her father and mother walking next to each other on Sunday morning on their way to their little church, you would never have imagined that they had a perfect daughter. The girl was so different from her parents that she must have been adopted or exchanged in the cradle.

Cor van Bemmel was a bookkeeper at Van Deutekom’s brickworks, just outside town. He had a funny walk. It was as if his left leg kept getting the signals from his brain a fraction late. Laura’s mother, small and rotund, always walked obliquely behind him, as if ready to catch him if he were to fall backward. The look in their eyes betrayed nothing of what was going on inside them, except that all cheerfulness was banished. They spoke to other people only when there was no alternative. According to Laura, they lived in virtual silence at home, too.