Free Asta's Book by Ruth Rendell

her and push down the lower part makes her look like a parcel that’s tied up in the middle with too tight a string. What makes it worse is that her dress is just like brown paper, creased the way brown paper is, and pleated like a parcel where you fold in the edges.
    She lifted her eyes and then looked very pointedly back at my hand.
    ‘You don’t wear a wedding ring, Mrs Westerby.’
    I hate the way she pronounces my name, but they all do it that way here, so I suppose I must get used to it. I drew out my other hand from under Swanny’s soft furry head and held it out to her the way you might hold out your hand for some man to kiss. Not that I know any men who would.
    ‘That’s on your right hand,’ she said. ‘Is it your mother’s?’
    ‘We wear our wedding rings on our right hands in Denmark,’ I said very coldly.
    She wasn’t put out, she wouldn’t be. ‘I’d change it over if I were you. If you don’t want people talking.’
    It’s too big for that finger. One’s right hand is always a bit bigger than one’s left, I suppose. Anyway, I’ve changed it over even if it does slither up and down. I wouldn’t care if it were just me but I have to think of the children and it’s not fair on them if people think I’m not respectable.
    Reading over what I’ve written I can see there’s a line that really shouldn’t be there. But who’s going to read it? It’s in Danish and Danish might as well be Hottentot for all the people round here understand a word of it.
    October 23rd, 1905
    Autumn has come and all the leaves are turning. I love the trees with leaves that are five-fingered and bright gold and the fruit that hangs on them like apples with spikes, though I miss the beeches. I haven’t seen a beech tree since I came to England.
    Another visit from Mrs Gibbons with more nosiness and impertinent questions. If we were Danish how did it happen we had an English name?
    ‘It’s not English,’ I said. ‘It’s pronounced Vest-er-bew.’
    She gave a funny little laugh to indicate she didn’t believe me. It is odd the way the same letters can be pronounced so differently. When I first came here I kept saying to myself that I wanted to see Hootha Park, and was I surprised when I found out how they pronounce Hyde here! I’m glad I never said Hootha aloud.
    The sky was a very pale blue yesterday but today the fog has come back. The fog is thick and yellow and I’m not surprised the people here call it a pea-souper. Still, it reminded me of pea soup, the kind made with a ham bone and yellow split peas we used to have when we lived in Sweden, so I got Hansine to make some and we all had it for supper. Well, not all, not Swanny, who still just has me and thrives.
    October 25th, 1905
    A letter yesterday from Tante Frederikke, the first for more than two months. The Thorvaldsens had a memorial service for Oluf which, I agree with her, seems very affected for a boy aged fifteen. They never recovered his body from the sea. There were lots on the Georg Stage that were never found. I can’t imagine how that would feel, to know you have a child and next day you haven’t any more, you’ve nothing, not even a dead body. It doesn’t seem right, though I know few people would agree with me, this training children to fight at sea, for that is what it amounts to, training fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds to be soldiers on ships. It’s even worse than training girls of sixteen to be wives.
    I’ve discovered that if you don’t want to dream of something the best way to stop it is to think about it very hard before you go to sleep at night. You’d think that was the way to make you dream of it but the reverse is true. So I made myself think of Swanny being taken away from me and hidden somewhere and me having nothing of her, not even a picture. It won’t happen, it can’t happen but it made my pillow wet with my tears. Still, it worked and I dreamed of Rasmus coming back and saying we all had to go to Australia