Between Two Seas Read Free

friend, in fact.
    ‘Well, whatever are you doing travelling off to the ends of the earth then? That’s what I’d like to know. My dear, you can’t go all that way alone. You’re just a child.’
    I knew she’d mention this again.
    ‘It was a promise to my mother,’ I tell her. ‘And what alternative do I have? The life that we led was bearable only because we had each other. Alone it would be no life at all. I couldn’t face it.’
    ‘I know your dear mother was a true friend to you, young as she was.’ Mrs Forbes reaches out and takes my hand, looking earnestly at me. ‘But it’s possible now that you will make other friends. Not replace her, that can’t be done, but so as you’re not as alone as you think you’d be.’
    ‘How would that be possible? We never made any friends in all these years.’ I’m surprised. She must know how we were shunned, though she never did so herself. ‘I even wrote a letter to my mother’s family, as I promised her,’ I remind Mrs Forbes. ‘I explained who I was and that my mother had died, and gave them the date of the funeral. You know I haven’t heard from them. I’m wanted by no one here.’
    Mrs Forbes lets go of my hand and takes up her mending again. Looking at her sewing as intently as she had looked at me a moment before, she says, in a careful voice, ‘Well, my dear, you’ll forgive my plain speaking, I’m sure. But your mother was too proud and too ashamed of what she’d done to make friends even with those as would’ve been willing. She felt her situation more than she needed to. Especially brought up high like she was, in a grand house and all. She never got over the change. She turned to you. Inward-looking, like. You could live different if you chose.’
    Her bright eyes are on me again, shining in her lined face. She means it kindly, I know, but I’m not used to anyone speaking to me like this. I feel resentment welling up inside me at this criticism of my mother. No one but me knows how hard my mother found it to live here among these people who despised her. I press my lips together and shake my head.
    ‘No. It’s better I go.’
    I’ve looked into many ways of crossing to Denmark. I tried the larger ships first, which take passengers across the North Sea from Grimsby. The Danish company DFDS has a ferry called the Esbjerg . There are also a number of freight ships sailing regularly to Esbjerg. But none of these are within my means, as I also need money to travel to Skagen once I get to Denmark. I have a tattered map of the country on the wall and I can see the journey from Esbjerg to Skagen will be a long one.
    I have been forced to go from one Danish fishing cutter to another in the harbour and beg a passage. Some of the men speak no English, and of those who do, most shake their heads at once and turn away when they understand what I want.
    ‘We don’t take women or children,’ they tell me.
    ‘Please!’ I begged one gruff, bearded fisherman. ‘I have no other way of crossing.’
    ‘No. Not possible.’ He waved me away, ending the conversation abruptly.
    ‘I need to go to my father,’ I pleaded with a kindly-looking captain only yesterday.
    ‘Write him to come and fetch you,’ he advised me, a strong Danish accent on his words. ‘You are too young for coming alone on a boat like this.’
    I walked home, defeated.
    How can I write to my father?
    He doesn’t even know I exist.
    I can see the light has begun to change now: my stitching is tinted with the gold of late afternoon sunshine. I lay it aside, unfinished. It’s time to go down to the harbour; the fishing boats will be in. I feel the familiar lurch of dread in my stomach.
    ‘I need to go out,’ I tell Mrs Forbes.
    She doesn’t ask where I’m going. I always go to the harbour at this hour, but discussing it might reopen the argument.
    ‘You’re welcome to stay here and sew a while,’ I tell her.
    ‘That’s all right, my dear, I got to get the evening meal on for