Rob and Elroy, Amsterdam ’79

I am eight years old and I have learned to stay at school during lunch.

The guest family my mother pays has three sons, and I prefer not to go back there at midday.

I prefer the girls who take the piss out of my exquisite table manners, my Burberry coat, my McGregor shoes, and the aluminium foil my lunch comes wrapped in, instead of a proper plastic box.

I am new.

I came from a Montessori school where things were different, and now they are not different and the group was already a group before I arrived.

When it rains the games come out and this part I like.

I am a nerd.

I do not let people win.

First the board games, until no one wants to play against me anymore; then the ball games in the gym. This makes me unpopular with the boys too, because I am quicker and hand-eye coordination came built in. But I will not lose on purpose, and that combination—being better, and unwilling to pretend otherwise—pleases nobody.

I thought.

I am walking around the pond. It is raining the way it always rains in Amsterdam, which is to say a steady drizzle. And then I hear my name.

I see them coming from behind the bend with the weeping willow.

Rob and Elroy. The two most popular boys. Elroy has white-blond hair. Rob is darker blond with freckles. They are the kind of boys who have always known they belong somewhere.

Elroy asks if I want to be his girlfriend.

I don’t know what to do with this question. I ask what it means.

He says: holding hands.

For the rest of my time at that school, both of them walk me to the bus or the car. One on each side. A hand each.

I am fifty-six now, and I have never had a single boyfriend.

I understand why, when I think about the pond.

Love arrived for me first as something held lightly, from both sides, with no one owning anything. No games required. No management. Just: your name called across the water, and two hands, and the rain.

All is what it is. It always was.

I.Ph.

I.Ph. de Lange / © 2026 CYcrds