She couldn’t have been more surprised

What happened before …

After a disappointing phone call to a woman who clearly wasn’t Marleen and didn’t have the faintest idea who I was, I tried to figure out another way to find my old-time friend. The most obvious place to look these days is the internet, starting with social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Blogger. None of these offered a conclusive result. At one point I thought that I had found her. I found a Facebook page of someone with the same name, although I must say that Marleen’s family name is quite common in Belgium and even Holland.

A recently added photo looked promising too. It showed a 50-something, fair-haired woman in a summer frock, posing with two teenage girls against a turquoise, cloudless sky. I racked my brain trying to find some resemblance with the twenty year old Marleen that I had known in the late 80ties, early 90ties. The longer I stared at the photo, the less convinced I became.

Why not try it the old-fashioned way? The online telephone directory. And … bingo! No, I didn’t find Marleen. That would have been too easy. However, I stumbled across her father’s name. He and her mother apparently still lived in the village where Marleen grew up. I remember her parents rather well, especially her father. When my husband died he was working with an insurance company and he gave me some very useful tips and help while going through the inevitable red-tape one has to deal with when a near one passes away.

I called the number and Marleen’s father picked up. I identified myself, hoping he would still remember me. After all, both her parents must be in their late seventies by now. After the usual preliminaries he told me that Marleen was now living in Kos. The line was rather bad and I mistook Kos for Koersel, a village not far from their home. At my request he gave me her telephone number, which turned out to be much longer than the usual 9 digits. The 0030 prefix indicated that it was a Greek number …

Runway of Corfu airport on the left. (photo from the internet)
Looks small from the sky, doesn't it. Hope my Airbus a319 pilot knows what he's doing. 

I hesitated before dialing it. In the past a telephone conversation with Marleen had usually lasted several hours. Telephone calls in Belgium are free of charge between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. and during weekends and official holidays. This rule doesn’t apply to calls to other countries though. Our former calling habits in mind, an unprepared conversation would probably cost me a fortune.

I quickly ran the intended conversation through my head and dialed the number. The phone at the other end was ringing bright and clear: “Marleen speaking” – “Hi Marleen …” Before I had the chance to say another word, she chanted “Martine?!” It was heart-warming to discover that – after all these years – she immediately recognized my voice …