Girl in the Blue Coat

Hanneke, Ollie, and Willem want to do something “normal,” so they take a bike ride, even though it’s freezing cold. Hanneke’s bike slips on ice, and she crashes. Her injuries make her think of the scars Judith said Mirjam had on her knee from tripping on a piece of rusty fence, and suddenly, Hanneke realizes that the body she changed and saw buried had no scars: “[W]homever I dressed—whoever that person was, it wasn’t Mirjam Roodveldt” (262).

Hanneke goes to see Mina and looks again at the image of the girl in the blue coat being brought into the theater. This time, they are able to use a projector to view the slide. Mina is unsure of whether or not it is Mirjam. This time, Hanneke notices that the girl is looking in a different direction than everyone else in the photograph. Hanneke wonders what else she was afraid of.

Hanneke goes to Mrs. Janssen’s house, but she finds it empty. Someone else arrives—Tessa Koster, who formerly worked in Mr. Janssen’s furniture shop. She comes with the family photographs from the Roodveldts. In the stack, Hanneke finds a photo of Mirjam and Amalia. She realizes that the girl she buried was Amalia.