“And if there are no graves?”

“Then the sea.”

Matthew nodded. “I, too, was glad to go back. If only to say goodbye.”

They sat together as the sun faded behind the trees, lowering through the branches. The kites drifted to the ground, a swirl of colour, and children ran to gather them up.

When they parted, he left as if he would be seeing them again, shaking Wideh’s hand, then putting his lips to the boy’s hair. She knew that what she and Matthew had shared in childhood had carried them safely through, a net where all other lines had been torn away. All these years, the net had held. His eyes rested on Ani’s face. They said goodbye to one another, and then he stepped away from them. She saw what he had given her, the one thing her parents had been unable to do, prepare her for this parting, this letting go.

A betjak came along and he climbed in. She watched the vehicle pull out onto the busy street, watched for as long as she could, until it was one among so many others. Wideh took her arm and pulled her lightly, and together they walked along the crowded road, eventually crossing back into the park, towards Jalan Kamboja.

In the late afternoon, Wideh sleeps on a blanket in the grass, a magazine open on his chest. The fuchsia shrubs, planted in a border along the canal, reach out luxuriantly. Low against the sky, a flock of avocet, or kluut, veer and dip in unison. They are familiar to Ani now, these elegant northern birds, the kluut with their black-tipped wings; the heron that stand in the fields, watchful.

The birds tip towards the east, their movement coinciding with the appearance of Frank Postma, who steps with a flourish into the garden, his daughter, Ingrid, close behind him. Ani walks across the grass to meet them, and he puts his hands on her shoulders, kissing her on both cheeks. Ingrid presents the box of pastries that she says they bought in the Indonesian market in The Hague. Spekkoek, Frank announces, klepon and ongol-ongol. Only the best. Ingrid nods. “A veritable dessert buffet.” At these words, Wideh gets to his feet.

Frank asks to see Wideh’s photographs, and, after some prodding, Wideh brings out an envelope of prints taken during a recent trip to Southeast Asia. In one, the harbour at Sunda Kelapa, a study of the myriad lines of rigging that criss-cross the sky. In another, a stand of trees half concealed by fog, the trunks, otherworldly, crooked and gnarled. “Mount Kinabalu,” he says. “A cloud forest in North Borneo. In the high altitude, the clouds deposit drops of water on the trees, and this provides what little moisture they need.” He selects a print and shows it to Frank. “Here’s a pitcher plant, one of the carnivorous plants of the region.”

For a moment, Ani believes it is her father speaking. In her memory, they are walking single-file through the jungle, Ani between her parents, their voices layering into the canopy above her.

Sipke appears, bringing beer and wine and a half-dozen glasses. In the last few months, his hair has begun to grey, a brush of white at the edges. Ani pours the drinks and Sipke stands with one hand on the small of her back, listening as Wideh describes Jakarta, the neighbourhoods bulldozed or rezoned, made over into something entirely different. Walking on Jalan Kamboja, he had searched among the remaining businesses, finding an elderly woman who remembered the street the way it was in the early 1960s, the Pondok Restaurant, the Dutch portrait studio. “They went away with their little boy,” she had told him. “I’m not sure where they’ve gotten to now.”

“Up to no good, of course,” Frank says. He lifts his glass, takes a sip of beer. “I remember it all so clearly. Now, when I look at these young kids, going off with their cameras to Bosnia, to Croatia, I want to pack my bags and follow them. Being a photographer is what I’ve always done. I’m not equipped for any other life.”

“That time is gone,” Ingrid says, reaching out to touch her father’s shoulder. “You’ll have to content yourself with dusty old Holland. What was that line again?” She looks up at the cloudless sky, remembering. “‘O starshine on the fields of long ago.’”

Sipke finishes the words. “‘Bring me the darkness and the nightingale . . . and the faces of my friends.’”

Twilight comes, and the frogs are a chorus on the banks. Joos, their neighbour and Sipke’s boyhood friend, shows up with box wine. Quantity, Joos says, is the order of the night. Beside him, Sipke frowns at the seal. While the glasses are being refilled, Ingrid stands up and finds Wideh’s guitar leaning against the wall. She sets it on her lap, her fingers moving lightly over the strings, and the notes disperse, weaving together the space around them. Their voices rise, enclosing her, Frank’s erudite and Joos’s bombastic. Her heart eases to see Sipke and Wideh relaxed and laughing. It does not feel as if it is she who is leaving. Rather, the world is withdrawing from her, stepping back; it is taking its leave.

There is a child in the canal, barely visible. In the dim light, Ani can see her floating on her back, her hair in pigtails, her arms flung wide. Around her, tall fronds reach above the water, interrupting the reflection of the evening sky. Slowly, the girl drifts past. Then, as if aware of someone watching, she turns onto her stomach, swimming, her shoulders appearing then submerging, her pale feet taking turns to break the surface.

When Ani looks up, she sees Sipke, and the tenderness in his expression returns her to a morning almost thirty years ago. She and Wideh are in the airport in Amsterdam, their one trunk on the ground. She sees the mass of people, the high wavering lights, and then Sipke coming towards them.

Together they leave the airport. Outside, they find that a light snow is falling. Sipke has borrowed his brother’s car, and they drive under a series of concrete bridges, into the open. The colours transfix her, muted shades of green and brown, ice beneath a pearl-white sky. Everywhere, the land is unfamiliar, unimagined, canals slipping across the fields. For a moment, the future comes to her, as vivid and clear as a memory unfolding. The highway rises onto a plateau, the land falls away. The North Sea opens before her, wind rippling the water.

January

It had been one of those rare winter days, almost a year ago now, Ansel recalls, when the chill of the season seemed, for a few hours, a thing of the past. He had just arrived home from work, and Gail was sitting on the front porch. She had earphones on and she was listening to music. This is the way he remembers it. Gail in jeans and a cardigan, watching the life of the street go by.

What are you listening to? he asked. She told him to guess, and then, smiling, she took both of his hands, doing a jive. Somebody across the street whistled long and low. Car doors slammed, talk radio spilled out a nearby window. She was all energy, all heat. They were dancing on their handkerchief of lawn, and he felt as if something he had lost was, for a moment, within reach again. Later, her feet on his lap as she read the newspaper. This is good, she had said. Her voice was hopeful. This is right.

Overhead, the fluorescent lights in the hospital corridor waver. Ansel takes the stairs up, emerging on the fifth floor, into the quiet of the ICU. He stops at the nurses’ station to take his bearings. The phone rings, the head nurse turns his face away, speaking in a low voice, and Ansel continues along the corridor.

At the far end of the ward, he can see Alistair in the last bed. A nurse is checking his IV lines. Alistair’s eyes are closed, and he gives the impression not of sleeping but of being deeply absorbed, preoccupied by his own thoughts. Ansel scans the monitor, then picks up the chart from the foot of the bed. He runs a finger over the lines as he reads, and the movement reminds him of his own father, of how once, when he was a child, he had stood at his father’s side in this same ICU. They had walked from bed to bed and his father had told him to be very still, that he should not be there, but he wanted Ansel to see how things were. The hush and gravity of the ward made Ansel want to run outside, swing a bat, stomp up and down on the pavement. His anxiety must have shown. His father bent down, hands on Ansel’s shoulders, holding his gaze. “Sooner or later,” he said, gently, “we all end up in the care of another.”