The Ditch

Robert Walter, the mayor of Amsterdam, is happily married to Sylvia (not her real name), who is from an unnamed foreign country. They have one daughter, Diana (also not her real name). At a New Year’s party, Robert sees his wife laughing with one of his colleagues and immediately assumes that the two are having an affair. To confirm his suspicions, Robert becomes hypervigilant while trying to maintain a veneer of normalcy. Meanwhile, his 90-year-old parents tell him that they have decided to die by suicide rather than burden him with their inevitable decline, and best friend Bernard reveals that he has a terminal illness and also intends to die by suicide. Then a journalist interviewing Robert claims she’s been given a tip that Robert was the perpetrator of a vicious crime in his youth. How much of this is true, and how much is the wild imaginings of an overtaxed mind? Readers will struggle with unanswered questions about the underlying truth even as the impact of emotions that may have run amok is juxtaposed with the possibility that Robert has figured it all out.