Utrecht

Utrecht is the former home of Steef and Rebecca and the setting of the fatal mistake that became a lasting rupture in Steef’s life. The city appears in contrasting memories: as the neighborhood Rebecca hoped to recreate for Sem, and as the place where Steef mistook a man’s mobile phone for a weapon and shot him.

Former Home and Family Background

Steef describes Utrecht as the couple’s old neighborhood. Rebecca wanted contact with the people in their new community and hoped to make it as welcoming for Sem as the place they had left. Her wish to give their son a garden, fresh air, and nearby friends helped drive the move away from city life to a quieter municipality after Steef was transferred. He acknowledges that her reasons made sense, even as he finds their new-build surroundings bleak and lifeless.

That move also marks a change in the couple’s circumstances. Steef says they needed money and had to sell his Cruiser. In his account, Rebecca’s pregnancy ultimately brought him to accept a suburban family life he had resisted: he had not wanted a child and believed he was not stable enough to be a father, but Rebecca wanted a home in which Sem could grow up safely.

The Shooting in Utrecht

Utrecht is also where Steef shot a man the previous year. The man was a drug user whom Steef mistook for an armed dealer. Steef believed the man was drawing a weapon; what he had taken for a gun was a mobile phone. The error turned a moment of perceived danger into a fatal shooting.

Steef tells Peter that he was profoundly shaken afterward. He says that everything came out and that he could not work for months. Rebecca responds to the disclosure by stroking his back, a quiet gesture of support as he describes the aftermath. He also connects his distress to his earlier service in Srebrenica, saying that what he experienced there never left him.

Significance in Steef’s Story

The two Utrecht references frame different forms of injury and change. The remembered neighborhood represents a family life Rebecca wanted to preserve in a new setting; the shooting reveals how Steef’s perception of danger could turn disastrously wrong and how deeply the incident affected him. Utrecht is therefore more than a point on the couple’s map: it anchors both the domestic past they left behind and a traumatic event whose consequences followed Steef into his later life.