Chapter 220

• She’s dead now. She died when I was twelve. Like mother, like daughter—that’s what the great-aunt who took me in after her death used to say to me. It’s what people think, isn’t it? I feared at one stage that I could grow up to be like her myself. She often said to me herself that I would
• Still silence.
• "You’re shocked, of course. and disgusted. People are—it’s only natural. What kind of responsible parent would want their child to play with a child whose mother sold her body to buy drugs? Certainly the parents of the children I was at school with didn’t, and who could blame them? And what kind of man would want to take the risk of having a relationship with a woman whose mother had sex with men for money? You won’t want me now, Arni. I know that. You have a responsibility, after all, to your name and to your position.’