Filthy

‘Where is Jonas?’ she asked, irritated. ‘Probably hugging trees with his Droef mates,’ grinned Willem-Jan. There were shrugs. Jonas always forgot appointments. ‘Then we’ll just start,’ said Bianca, automatically taking the lead. Willem-Jan whistled between his teeth as she handed out A4s: ‘Wow, an agenda. Do you have a hammer too?’ Whereupon Bianca removed a shoe and banged it on the table theatrically. ‘Order,’ she shouted hoarsely. ‘Point one is jobs around the house.’ ‘Yes, we urgently need to scrap them,’ said Willem-Jan, and narrowly avoided the ‘chair’s hammer’ flying past his head. ‘I think the division of tasks is quite fair,’ Vera started up. ‘Only people often do their jobs too late.’ Accusing glances come Willem-Jan’s way. ‘We need a punishment for doing your job too late,’ said Elise. ‘Treating everyone to cake. Homemade of course.’ Bianca rolled her eyes. Nowadays she found everything Elise said intensely irritating. Especially since the joke with the Spotted message went wrong and Elise ended up with Robin, a cool KSV boy. ‘We need to talk about the washing up too,’ added Elise. ‘The…’ ‘Why?’ asked Bianca. ‘Well, there is always a lot of it left standing and it stinks.’ ‘You left it there recently too, you know,’ said Bianca, folding her arms. Elise took no notice. ‘And after washing up everyone should clean the sink. It’s not much trouble, whereas it is a filthy job to do for someone else.’ ‘And here I was, imagining we were living in a student house,’ said Bianca. ‘How stupid of me.’ Her rising voice made Willem-Jan look up from his smartphone. ‘Is something wrong?’ asked Elise. ‘Yes there is something wrong. Why does everything always have to be done your way? Whenever you are here you are reading. When do you even see the fucking washing up?’ Bianca’s tone got louder and louder and red spots appeared on her neck. ‘Why are you being so mean?’ asked Elise calmly. ‘Jesus, you really are intolerable,’ exploded Bianca. I don’t want to hear any more of your goody-goody whining. I don’t want to see your goody-goody face again. I want you to…’ For one moment Bianca was quiet, breathing heavily, searching for words. Then she burst into tears and rushed off on one shoe. Everyone looked around in bafflement and Willem-Jan banged on the table with his hand: ‘I declare the meeting closed.’ Nobody laughed.