Vintage Short Stories from Denmark

As part of the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge I have tried to read some stories that are a bit out of my usual diet. Here are three old stories from Denmark, all from "The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations", ed. Julian Hawthorne, a free Gutenberg E-text in English.


Jørgen Vilhelm Bergsøe (1835-1911), The Amputated Arms
"I was studying at the University, and being coached in anatomy by my old friend Solling."
An anatomy teacher and some of his students lose the arms of their skeletons. Is this simple theft, a prank or a sinister ghost story? The main character, young Simsen, goes to the local cemetery in the middle of the night to find a new arm so they can continue their studies.

But of course he shouldn´t have! This may not be the most brilliant crime story, but I found it entertaining and well worth reading.


Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1789-1862), The Sealed Room.
Interestingly, I know Ingemann as the writer of several beautiful hymns and had no idea he also dabbled in crime fiction. The story is set in Kiel where an old widow lives in a mysterious house with a secret room, "a corner room on the main floor" which "had not been opened for generations".

When her daughter Elizabeth marries, they need the large hall next to the secret room for the ball, however. Late in the night the guests dance, drink and wind each other up, until the bridegroom challenges Elizabeth´s unpleasant cousin, Lieutenant Wolff, to stay right outside the sealed room for the rest of the night.

This story is well-written and fairly interesting with a sinister atmosphere that would probably appeal to Stephen King fans.



Steen Steensen Blicher (1782-1848), The Rector of Veilbye.
This story is probably the most famous of the three, and while "What the Forest Lake Hid" from 1903 may be called the first Danish crime novel, this one is regarded as the first crime story.

The story begins with the diary of the local District Judge Erik Sørensen who explains how the father of his betrothed Mette Quist, the temperamental rector of Veilby, gets into trouble when he hits a lazy servant with a spade. The rector assures his son-in-law that the servant got up and ran away, but soon after several witnesses come forward, claiming Quist buried the dead man in his own garden.

"A venerable man of God - the father of my betrothed - is in prison!

The story is a tragic account of a murder, based at least in part on a true story, but despite the surprising ending, the story does not include much of the detection modern readers would expect in a crime story.

Read for the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge.

Bogudfordringen - februars noveller.

En opsamlingspost om de tre novellesamlinger, jeg fik læst i februar. Den første i bogform, de to andre som e-bøger. At det blev tre amerikanske forfattere, er helt tilfældigt.

Først læste jeg Roald Dahls Kispus (1978), først udgivet på engelsk under titlen Kiss, Kiss (1959).
Indlæg om novellerne (fra to til fire stjerner):
Roald Dahl, Kiss, Kiss
Roald Dahl stories ...
Roald Dahl Stories.

Dernæst læste jeg Cathryn Grant´s samling af kortprosa, Flash Fiction for the Cocktail Hour (2010).
Indlæg om teksterne (tre-fire stjerner):
E is for Electronic Pleasures
F is for Flash Fiction 

Og til sidst gik jeg i gang med Laura Lippman´s Hardly Knew Her (2008).
Indlæg om novellerne (tre-fire stjerner):
Laura Lippman, Hardly Knew Her (2008)
Laura Lippman, Hardly Knew Her II
Laura Lippman, Hardly Knew Her III
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Laura Lippman, Hardly Knew Her III

This is the third and final post about Lippman´s collection of short stories.

Easy as A-B-C
This is the story about a contractor who ends up redecorating his grandparents´ old house for a very charming, new buyer.

I liked this quotation in particular:
"The stuff in books - anyone can learn that. All you need is time and curiosity and a library card, and you can fake your way through a conversation with anyone."

What you cannot fake, according to our contractor, is his very important job, restoring old houses professionally so they won´t kill their owners one day.


The Shoeshine Man´s Regrets.
This is a Tess Monaghan story. Tess and her friend watch a shoeshine man and a rude customer. When they get into a fight, Tess interferes, doing her best to stop the two men, while her friend calls the police. Very soon what looked like a minor brawl turns into crime of quite different dimensions, however.

A charming story about human character.

I bought the Kindle edition myself. Recommended for lovers of short stories.

Laura Lippman, Hardly Knew Her II

This is the second post about Lippman´s collection of short stories.

The Babysitter´s Code
"The rules, the real ones, have seldom been written down, yet every girl knows them." 
Read this story about the young babysitter Terri Snyder, and you´ll never let a teenage girl babysit in your home again. Or perhaps you should just think about what you have left lying around in your lingerie drawer before you go.

Hardly Knew Her
Sofia is "a lean, hipless girl, the type that older men still called a tomboy in 1975" - a young girl who loves football but hates her father´s poker games - and the consequences for his family. His father has a habit of raiding the house and selling their belongings, and what can a girl do to get her treasures back? Quite a lot, it seems.

Arm and the Woman 
Many of my readers probably know much more about soccer moms than I do. Sally Holt is one of them, and she is also a very good listener which makes her very popular among men as well as women.

"To be a stay-at-home mother in Northwest D.C. was to be nothing less that a general, the Patton of the car pool, the Eisenhower of the HOV lane."

But when her husband leaves her, the whole system falls apart, and Sally has to come up with a plan to keep her home.

Laura Lippman, Hardly Knew Her (2008)

This is a collection of very different American short stories, the first part set in Baltimore.

The Crack Cocaine Diet
Kelley and her friend Molly have just dropped their boyfriends which is why they need a quick diet and new dresses to show the world how stupid these guys were to let them go. They decide cocaine must be the most efficient cure, and these two nice girls begin to look for an appropriate Baltimore corner to get their chosen drug.

Dear Penthouse Forum (A First Draft)
Andrew is stranded in the airport, having to wait for a plane the next morning, but fortunately he meets Maureen, a woman who is generous in more than one way and more than willing to help him out.

These stories are darker than Lippman´s Tess Monaghan stories, but strongly recommended. I bought the Kindle edition myself.
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Roald Dahl stories (1959)

My third and last post about Dahl´s collection, Kiss, Kiss (1959)

Georgy Porgy 
This is the story of George the vicar who is not exactly confident around women. A long story, including a rat experiment which is supposed to show something about the behaviour of the sexes.

This one was just too weird, even for me - enough said.

The Champion of the World
Here we meet the mechanics Gordon and Claud who have a nightly hobby: poaching pheasants. They come up with a marvelous plan, including some raisins, a perambulator and nearly two hundred pheasants.

A hilarious short story.

F is for Flash Fiction

Thank you, Kerrie, for hosting the weekly Crime Fiction Alphabet.

Flash is glimpses of angst, paranoia, dark humour - anything that lurks beneath the suburban facade.
I have read the second half of Cathryn Grant´s collection, "Flash Fiction for the Cocktail Hour", and again I will share a couple of quotations with you.

Get the collection for free - for a few days. 

Sitting with the Dead
The narrator, an old woman, meets her grandson´s fiancé, but is less than thrilled.

"She wore a dress with thin straps over her creamy white shoulders. Each time she reached for her wine glass, the strap on the left slid down her arm. The side of her breast popped out like the egg white emerges from a crack in a boiling egg - a silken bubble."

Besides, young Clara is a medium, conducting séances for money. A despicable practice as the dead should be left alone. No spoilers, but this particular story is among my favourites.

Out of Options.
Ah, black garbage sacks! I wonder what is in them in real life, but we all know what to expect when we come across them in crime fiction, don´t we?
Karla the caretaker doesn´t like dead bodies, but when she sees something sticking out of one of those black sacks in a dumpster, it seems she has no choice. Lovely (dark) twist.

Reverberation.
A sinister story about fireworks, but as always full of fine little observations about human beings and their priorities, "The carbonation sizzled against his teeth, probably rotting them away while he stood here doing nothing but wanting to kill someone." 

Latest news: see the winners of Cathryn´s give-away 

Roald Dahl stories & An Interview

Meet me today in an interview on Maxon Canyon´s blog "Thoughts in Progress". I hope you´ll join me/us - and remember to take a look at Mason´s cool blog. 

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Roald Dahl, Parson´s Pleasure + Mrs Bixby and the Colonel´s Coat
This is my second post about Dahl´s collection of short stories, Kiss, Kiss from 1959.

Mr Boggis, antique dealer and trickster, roams the English countryside to find exquisite furniture. One Sunday afternoon he stumbles on something quite extraordinary, a piece of furniture he must have, so now he just has to persuade the local farmer to sell it for a song.

Mrs Bixby is married to a boring dentist in New York but goes off to Baltimore once a month to have some fun with her more interesting colonel. She is in ecstasies when he gives her a beautiful mink coat, but how can she return home from a visit to her ´poor aunt´ with such an expensive present? Mrs Bixby comes up with a plan.

Both of these stories are of the ´he who laughs last laughs longest´ type, and though they were good, I didn´t find them quite as entertaining as "The Way Up to Heaven."

"Præstemandens fryd" & "Mrs Bixby og oberstens pels"
Her er mit andet indlæg om Roald Dahls novellesamling, Kispus.

Mr Boggis, antikvar og svindler, strejfer omkring på landet i England på jagt efter udsøgte møbler. En søndag falder han over noget helt usædvanligt; et møbel han simpelthen må eje, så drejer det sig bare om at narre det fra landmanden for en slik.

Mrs Bixby er gift med en kedelig tandlæge i New York men tager til Baltimore en gang om måneden for at more sig med sin noget mere spændende oberst. Hun er ellevild, da han forærer hende en smuk minkpels, men hvordan skal hun kunne komme hjem fra sin ´fattige tante´ med så dyr en gave? Mrs Bixby udtænker en plan.

Begge noveller er af typen ´den som ler sidst, ler bedst´, men selv om de var udmærkede, kom de ikke på højde med "Himmelstigen."
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E is for Electronic Pleasures

[Kerrie´s alphabet meme + two-sentence Tuesday, Women of Mystery - a bit early]

Do you know how many free or cheap pleasures you can find out there? IF you can read electronic texts in one way or the other. (If you are reading this, you probably can).

I downloaded a great selection of free flash fiction the other day: "Flash Fiction for the Cocktail Hour" - eleven well-written stories full of intriguing characters - written by American Cathryn Grant.

As I am going to use this collection for my Danish challenge (short story month), I´ll bring a couple of delicious quotations over the month.

A Thousand and One Bottles of Wine.
"She plucked at the spandex that clung to her legs like cobwebs. She wasn´t sure if the tight fabric looked good because it showed how slim she was, or looked bad because it left nothing to the imagination."

Things change in Corrine´s life, and she decides it´s a good opportunity to think of her life style. Read the story to see how this attempt turns out. And you know what: you can download the whole collection from Smashwords - absolutely free of charge. But don´t come back to blame me if you develop an addiction to Cathryn´s stories! I read one, and I have followed her blog ever since.

Tomorrow: come back to see how you can win Cathryn´s brand-new novel, The Demice of the Soccer Moms, or even a Kindle for one, very lucky winner.


Finally, a quotation from my latest flash story, Hand in Glove.

She found the other glove under a woodpile, and it all came back.
"Your mother loved you, sweetheart. She went up to your room and kissed you goodbye before she left," her father had assured her. 
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Roald Dahl, Kiss, Kiss (1959)

In January I read two "crime novels published before 2000" for my Danish reading challenge.
In February we have to read at least one collection of short stories so I have picked up this collection of the late British writer Roald Dahl´s short stories. I am sure many of you know him already either for his children´s books or for crime stories such as "Lamb to the Slaughter".

The first story in the Danish edition (with five stories only) is "The Way Up to Heaven". In this fine little story Mrs Foster is going abroad to visit her daughter. She is almost driven to distraction, however, as it is of the utmost importance for her never to be late, but her husband just doesn´t care. Or is it possible that he enjoys watching her growing frustration? Vintage Roald Dahl!

NB: remember, you have the chance to win an e-book until Sunday night! 


Roald Dahl, Kispus (1978).
I januar læste jeg to krimier fra før 2000 som en del af Bogudfordringen 2011. I februar skal der læses novellesamling, så jeg hev en samling Roald Dahl-historier ned fra hylden. Mange af jer kender ham sikkert, enten for "Charlie og Chokoladefabrikken", eller for hans finurlige kriminoveller.

Den første historie er Himmelstigen. Mrs Foster, som nærmest er besat af at komme til tiden, skal på et længere besøg hos sin datter i Paris, men som sædvanlig bliver hendes mand ved med at trække tiden ud. Er han bare et smøl, eller kan det tænkes, han nyder at se sin kones voksende ængstelse?

Førsteklasses Roald Dahl-historie!

Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, 1839

I have never read this famous old story before, but as I like other Poe stories, e.g. The Tell-tale Heart, I tried to download a free version to my Kindle.

The story is not crime, but a gothic mystery. It begins when Roderick Usher, the owner of the mysterious house, implores the narrator, an old friend, to visit him. Here is what he thinks on his return:

“I know not how it was – but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.”

The house seems to be doomed as the Usher line is always on the verge of dying out, and Usher´s desperation seems to be brought about by the serious illness of his sister, lady Madeline. The narrator is no less shocked when he sees his old friend: “Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!”

There are some similarities with The Tell-tale Heart as Poe relies hevily on atmosphere and sinister characters. The Fall of The House of Usher did not capture my interest the same way as The Black Cat, a brilliant psychological mystery, however.

(A short post; I know - but I just got my brandnew MacBook yesterday - we are still struggling to get to know each other)
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Wade McMahan, Witches Witch (2010)

As I said the other day, I am quite prepared to take a risk – at a price of $ 1.49.

The protagonist of this American short story is the private detective Richard Dick. Dick has been hired by Montague Johnson, an onion farmer of Georgia, to take a look at Barbie Fritzweller who is supposed to be a witch. Richard Dick does not believe in witches, however, so he seems to be more interested in Montague´s ravishing girlfriend, Savannah Periwinkle. 

Of course excellent writers can make first-person narrators just as credible and interesting as the third-person protagonist, but Richard Dick struck me as a rather flat character. The female characters were marginally better, but even in a short story I expect more than this.

This humorous fairy tale takes place around Halloween. Soon read – soon forgotten, and as it was only fourteen pages, I didn´t mind too much reading it on the screen.

The Visitor V

See part four here.

”Now, this is how we have planned to do this. I´ll sit up here next to you with the tape recorder. Then we are going to reconstruct the … well, the events as precisely as we can. You listen and use your eyes, and afterwards you tell us if you think everything looked all right.” Margaret Johnson got the feeling that she was talking to Emma Munch as if she were still four years old. A bit embarrassed she signaled to George Price that they were ready to begin the show now.

Contrary to their expectations the super had given his permission, but that was probably because he was waiting for an opportunity to gloat. Margaret was skeptical of the procedure George Price had chosen, but her colleague had assured her he knew exactly what he was doing.

She and Emma had to bend down in order to look through the banister. Not a sound reached them from the hall. Then a policewoman in a blonde wig and a floral dress stepped into the hall from the living room. She opened the front door quietly and let in a tall policeman in a tan wind jacket. Margaret discovered that she had been holding her breath. Until now the pair had followed the script to a T, as far as she could see, but now came the most important part. “You´ve got a new dress,” he said down there.

“No, that is not correct! That is not the way it was!” Emma sounded fragile, and very, very young.

Price stepped into the circle of light down there. “What are you saying, Emma?”

“It was not correct!” Her pupils were huge, and Margaret kept a close eye on her.

“Okay, we´ll try it once again.” He waved the two constables aside and whispered an instruction to them. They disappeared to either side of the hall.

Margaret put a hand on Emma´s shoulder, urging her to sit down again. The young girl was shaking, and she clenched her fists around the rails. Could she really justify that they went on with this performance? She had suggested that they let a psychologist be present, but Emma had turned down the idea vehemently. Why hadn´t she at least insisted they do it in bright daylight?

The woman in the dress stepped forth once again. She opened the door, and the wind jacket entered. “Please turn to the right,” someone whispered, and Margaret bit her lip. The woman leaned back her head, smiling expectantly, and the man bent down awkwardly. “You´ve got a new dress.”

”The ear! Look at his ear,” Emma whispered while she pushed her face up against the banister to get a closer look. And in the bright light from the ceiling lamp they all saw that Erich Munch´s left ear was frayed and torn on top, as if someone had snatched a tiny morsel.

For a second he stood like a statue on a floodlit stage, then he put his hands around the policewoman´s neck, squeezing it with all his might while he roared, “why didn´t I kill her too!”

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”And I swear she was on the point of sucking her thumb and wetting her pants again. But so was I,” Margaret admitted to George Price several hours later when they had finished taken down a murderer´s confession.

The Visitor IV

See part III here.

”Do you have anything at all which can justify spending our resources on this case again?” The superintendent tapped his pen against the green blotting pad.

Margaret Johnson kicked her colleague underneath the table. This meeting had been his idea, and if the boss was in that mood, she was not going to let anyone throw her to the wolves.

George Price rustled his papers. ”Erich Munch´s mother dies, and the following night her flat is burgled. Someone has gone through everything, but as far as we can see, nothing has been taken, or at least not anything valuable. We have the flat searched, and they find her diary from the year that Susanne Munch died stashed away in the cistern of all places.”

“Sounds like someone has been reading too many thrillers,” Margaret mumbled.

Price looked up from his notes for a second, but chose to ignore her remark. “A couple of days after Susanne´s death she writes in the diary: They keep asking me when he came and went. If only I could be sure I did not fall asleep during the film. But I have said what I said, and I can´t change that. And the flat is crawling with Erich Munch´s fingerprints.”

“So you are saying that the guy has left fingerprints in his own mother´s flat?” The corners of the superintendent´s mouth told their own, acid tale.

Price leaned forward, before he continued. “The diary is not as concrete as I had hoped for so we have no decisive new evidence yet. But Erich Munch´s mother was not nearly as certain as she claimed then, and apparently he knew that. Who else would go through her things in the middle of the night? Furthermore we have listened to that tape with Emma Munch´s conversation with the psychologist several times. That girl remembers something even if she doesn´t know it herself. And now next step must be a reconstruction.”

Price had been one of the first policemen on the scene of crime. The case went back to his days in uniform, but Margaret knew he would never forget the sight of the little girl who just sat there above the stairs, clutching a blue blanket.

To be finished on Saturday.

The Visitor III

See part two here.

She remembered the heavy soup of pity she had whirled around in for so long. Pity, or even worse, ill-concealed curiosity. “Wasn´t it your mom who …?” All their sticky eyes and the whispered remarks about the poor little girl which died away when she appeared.

She and Neil had been sent off to her grandparents afterwards. Her mother´s parents, obviously. Neil was just a baby; he didn´t understand a bit of what was going on around him, but they tried to keep Emma away from all the commotion. After that first night she hadn´t seen one single policeman in uniform, and it was also granny who put her foot down after some months and told them that Emma had had enough of all their experts and shrinks. If they left her alone, it would be far easier for her to forget it all.

Granny meant well and did her best, but it must sound strange to other people that it had taken several years until Emma was able to form a reasonably complete overview of what happened that night. Her mother had met a new boyfriend who was going to visit her when she had put the children to bed. She washed her hair, shaved her legs and made up her face meticulously, but not until she was certain Emma and Neil were asleep upstairs. Then she put on a new dress and her best necklace, and at some point she must have tried to get up some Dutch courage. They had found an empty whisky glass on the kitchen table. She also remembered to spray herself well and truly with perfume from the bottle on the dressing table. The last piece of information was one of the only things Emma had not been able to read in the papers and now, fifteen years on, it was very difficult for her to distinguish between what she really remembered, and what she had discovered via frequent research in the local library.

The police did not think anyone had rung the bell. Yet another detail in favour of an attacker whom her mother had expected and opened the door to, before he could wake up the children. Someone had certainly come to visit, someone who woke up Emma and made her sneak out onto the landing. This person kissed her mother, and afterwards… What went wrong between them? All her shiny pearls were spread on the floor, around the immovable body. And Emma just sat there in her wet nightdress. For how long would she have stayed there if the neighbours had not noticed that the lights were on in most of the house?

All that she knew about the investigation and whom the police suspected certainly came from the newspapers. Her father had had right of access to her for several years before she realized that he had been very close to stand trial for the manslaughter of his own wife. What if her grandmother, her father´s mother that is, had not been able to tell them that he had come home to her place and gone to bed in his old room even before the light was switched on in Susanne Munch´s hall?

In their second round the police had concentrated on the boyfriend. Not for long, Emma thought, because far too many witnesses came forward to testify that he had never fulfilled his casual promise to visit her mother that night. He had said something that afternoon which she had taken very seriously while he had gone out bowling with his mates like any other Tuesday evening. When it came to men, mom´s judgment could not have been very good.

It had cost Emma several years´ fight to free herself of all the staring eyes. Granny was like a safe haven, but as soon as the police had given up their suspicion of her father, he was allowed to see his children again of course. Little Neil grew used to him soon and moved in with him in their old home before long. For Emma things had been different. Dad came and visited her at granny´s, but even though she hadn´t quite understood then, she instinctively felt that they were stiff and formal and full of aversion to him during each visit. Before long she had begun wetting her pants and waking up from nightmares every time he had been around her.

She still saw her father now and then, and things were better between them. But they would never achieve a close relationship like the one between him and Neil. And she couldn´t even wear perfume. Just the slightest trace of a flowery perfume, and she could not breathe. She used to tell her friends that she was allergic.

And now her father´s mother had died. Would she be mired down in the same old soup again?

To be continued on Thursday.

The Visitor II

See part I here.

”What do you feel about it all today?” The psychologist folded her hands on the table and let silence fill the room.

Emma ran her fingers through her blonde hair while she did her best to survey what she felt. “I was never really certain what I had seen, but of course it destroyed my relationship with my father. I practically accused him of having strangled my mother. The police knew he couldn´t have done it, but every time I saw him…” She stopped and took a deep breath. It was so silly. She had been through this a million times, yet it was as if she had a black-out when she reached a certain point.

“What makes it so terrible is that until then I loved my dad more than anything. He was so funny and happy, and he was the one who read bedtime stories to me every night. When he didn´t make up his own stories, that is.”

The psychologist took her time, before she asked a new question. “So how did it affect you when your parents split up?”

“I must have missed him ever so much.” Again, Emma paused to think. This was not one of the questions she was used to hearing. “I am sure that if anyone had asked me, I would have chosen to live with my father. But I was so small, and everybody probably just assumed it would be best for me to stay with my mother.”

The psychologist gave her an encouraging nod.

“I suppose my mother coped fairly well. But all of a sudden she had to do it all on her own, look after two small children and a large house, and of course she had to work full time. I know for certain that I missed my bedtime story, because I pestered her all the time, wanting her to read to us. She always said she was tired.” She fiddled with a frayed cuticle.

“Do you remember what your father read to you?”

“Mostly Astrid Lindgren, I think. Or fairy tales. All my books from that time have gone. Somebody must have thought it was best when … He was such an excellent reader, he used different voices for each character, but I loved it even more when he made up a story himself, or told me about his childhood.”

“Do you think he had a good childhood?”

“Well, yes, at least that is the impression I got. I think he preferred to tell me exciting and scary stories, however. Sometimes he had to stay at my bedside and comfort me until I fell asleep, and that would make mommy so angry. For example when he told me about a huge dog that bit him.” Emma began to laugh, but stopped rather abruptly.

The psychologist scribbled something on the writing pad in front of her.

“Has all this something to do with my grandmother´s death?”

She lifted the pen for a second. “Why do you think so?”

“When will you stop treating me like a child?” Emma pushed her chair back and ran out of the room without another word.

To be continued on Tuesday.

The Visitor I

[Danske læsere kan eventuelt følge med her: Skrive-Bloggen]

Yes, I do know I brought this short writing exercise some time ago. In the meantime I have made it into a real short story, however. Part two will be brought tomorrow, part three on Tuesday, part four on Thursday and the ending on Saturday. Unless I have lost all my readers long before then.

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Abruptly she sat up in her bed. A deep voice had forced its way through the dark night into her half-conscious mind. Daddy must have come home!

Emma pattered out on the landing in bare feet, pulling the soft blanket after her like a tail. The floor felt cold under her feet. She watched them through the rails of the banister. They looked really funny in stripes. He was much taller than mommy so she had to lean back her head. “You´ve got a new dress.”

“Silly, you´ll wake up the children,” she whispered, but she didn´t look angry.

Even though it must be in the middle of the night, mommy had not gone to bed yet. She was wearing lipstick, and the new necklace from her birthday. The wrinkles on her forehead had gone. The man put his arms around her and whispered something Emma could not hear. She could only see his hair and the back of his head. She was not sure it was daddy after all.

“Won´t you come in?” Mommy sounded almost like a little girl.

From her perfect little lookout Emma saw him squeezing mommy´s neck. She didn´t really understand why the grown-ups liked that kind of thing. She had tried kissing Simon in the kindergarten, but he had just tasted like a cucumber. She leaned forward to get a better view, and right then she thought she could smell flowers. Mommy was wearing perfume.

Mommy was red in the face, and she did not smile any more. Emma heard her necklace snap, and saw how the light sparkled in the pearls, dancing in the air like a fountain.

She clutched the blanket in her hands and pulled it up to her eyes. Her thumb slid into her mouth while a small puddle formed beneath her feet.

To be continued tomorrow ...