Page 3 of The Expat Affair

My head whips around in a frantic but silent search for my clothes. My jeans, tossed over a chair in the corner. My shirt, in a crumpled heap on the floor. I don’t bother with my underwear, and I don’t stop long enough to zip my coat. I yank it on and shove my feet in my shoes and grab my bag from where it lay, splayed open on Xander’s chest of drawers.

And then I run.

Down the hall and through the living room and into Xander’s gleaming foyer, where I stab the button for the elevator—not exactly a speedy exit but searching for the stairs will take too long, and what if it leads me straight to the killer? The elevator whirrs upward, and I toss panicked glances over my shoulder, bracing for an ambush by a man with a bloody knife and a zip tie, silently chanting for the thing tohurry the hell up. The ping when the doors slide open is loud as a gunshot, and I lurch inside.

The elevator dumps me into the lobby, and I fly through the sleek space and out the door. A row of cars is parked at the curb, where I take a hard right and sprint in the direction of the park. All those miles logged on the trails along the river back home, all the endless loops through the Vondelpark—this is what I’ve been training for all this time. Getting away, putting some distance between me and Xander’s penthouse and whoever might still be lurking there. I run as fast as I can.

I don’t slow until I come to the intersection with the Willemsparkweg, a street bustling with trams and cars and bikes, people on their way to school and work. I choose the most conspicuous spot, the busiest corner, and screech to a stop. I pat the pockets of my coat, my jeans.

That’s when I realize I left my phone.

Willow

I’m standing with the other mothers at the edge of the Willemspark School yard, watching the kids play, when I hear the sirens. More than one, a great chorus of swooping sounds, the notes weaving and undulating in the early morning air.

It’s well before the morning bell still, and the playground is packed. Kids, red-cheeked and wet-nosed from the frigid January air, hanging from the monkey bars and climbing up the slide, playing marbles and kicking around a ball. The mothers, clumped together in tight huddles by the bikes or like me, lined up along the brick railing that runs along the sidewalk. The teachers, guarding the double doors in fat coats and sensible shoes. The sirens whoop and shriek, sending a hush over the playground.

Even four-year-old Sem, my sweet, soft-hearted Sem, medically deaf until his cochlear implants at fourteen months, sits stock-still in the flat stretch of metal at the bottom of the slide. I’d sign for him to get out of the way if the little girl at the top weren’t frozen by the sound, too.

Lucy, an adorable blonde in Sem’s class, runs up to her mother, a Brit. “Mama, wat is er?”

Willemspark is a Dutch school, but because of its location in posh Amsterdam Zuid, there are plenty of students here like Lucy and Sem, with one Dutch and one expat parent. Like me, Lucy’s mother has lived here long enough she doesn’t need a translation.

Mama, what’s wrong?

She shakes her head, answering in crisply accented English. “I don’t know, sweetheart. Must be a fire or something.”

It’s not a fire. Lucy’s mom knows it, and so does everyone else. Last month, at a popular lunch spot only a few blocks away, a man was shot in the head while sucking down a plate of spaghetti. These sirens are on that level, and they have kids tipping up their heads, their gazes searching the sky. Last month, the sirens were accompanied by helicopters.

I move through the crowd of tittering mothers on the sidewalk, divided into their usual packs. The English-speakers, pasty-skinned Brits, and big-boned Americans, the occasional Australian or Scot. Other expats, neatly divided by skin color and language. The Dutch mothers, hyperinsular and utterly unapproachable, a competitive band of school volunteers whom the teachers not-so-jokingly call themoedermafia. I don’t really fit in with any of them, but if anyone here knows what those sirens are about, it will be one of themoedermafia.

I sidle up to Brigitte, the loudest of the bunch, a lean, artsy type with round eyes and porcelain skin, bare except for a lipstick so red and shiny it makes me think of blood.

“What happened? Do you know?” I ask in my best Dutch, which admittedly, isn’t all that great. All the weird vowels, the harsh guttural sounds. Five years in this country, and I still can’t wrap my tongue around the language.

She answers me in English, which somehow always feels like an insult. “They’re going to that condo building on the Valeriusplein. You know, the new building with all thepatsers.”

Patsersare show-offs, and if she’s talking about the same building that I’m thinking of, it’s filled with them. Loud, blustery social climbers who live there so they can brag that they own one of the most expensive homes in all of Amsterdam. The cheapest condos in that building went for six million euros a pop, and the penthouse...

“Nine million, Willow.” Xander’s voice sounds through my head. “That’s more than €20 thousand per square meter, the highest square meter price in the country. Just look at all these amenities.”

This was late one evening back in the fall, halfway through a lengthy and detailed tour, and he wasn’t wrong. Xander’s penthouse really is something else. Bought with money he earned conquering the luxury diamond market in Asia, America, and Lord knows where else before my husband, Thomas, lured him back to Holland. This hot-shot gemologist back from abroad, here to drag House of Prins into the twenty-first century.

“Are you sure? Are you absolutely certain it’s that building?”

By now, I’ve switched to English, too. If it’s true what Brigitte says, if those sirens are indeed swirling around Xander’s condo building on the Valeriusplein, I can’t be bothered with the effort of translating my questions to Dutch.

“Julia and I biked by there on the way to school,” Brigitte says, glancing over with a brusque nod; Julia is her daughter, a six-year- old carbon copy of her mother in more ways than one. “There were all sorts of people standing outside, waiting for the police to get there. More than one of them said the wordmurder.”

The woman on the other side of her—Manon is her name—sucks in a noisy breath, while, meanwhile, the air in my lungs turns solid.

I turn in the direction of the sirens, my gaze lifting across the canal and toward the building and the park beyond, but it’s too far away, with too many buildings in between. There’s nothing but trees and blue sky.

Still. An ominous feeling seeps through my veins like silty Dutch soil.

“How much you want to bet it was the Rolex gang?” Manon says to Brigitte in Dutch, ignoring me completely. Manon is a former model with a tongue as sharp as her jawline, and I’ve never beena fan—though I’m fairly certain the feeling is mutual. “There’s so much money in that building. It’s Walhalla for the Rolex gang.”

The Rolex gang, a group of delinquent teenagers roaming the city, trawling the shops and streets for anyone worth mugging, then following them home and robbing them blind. They especially love watches and jewelry.

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