The cold slinks about on the floor and makes my ankles hurt. Somehow, in this house, the border between outside and inside is not as clear as in a block of flats. The weather comes in, the mud comes in, the wind comes in, creepy-crawlies and bats come in. We haven’t got a doorbell, either. Or we do, but it doesn’t work. Here, people just stroll into the hall. But Pekka keeps a close eye on the interior doors; you’ve got to shut all doors after you or he gets uptight. One day he explained that the brickwork at the centre of the house is like a warm heart jointly heated by separate fireboxes. And I thought: the centre of this house is an ice-cold hall, more like. We heat the rooms on the edges and keep the cold out with these thin interior doors, but in the hall, a chilly draught blows.
Yesterday I was at home on my own and it got so cold I decided to light a fire in the stove. Pekka had shown me the dampers and the hatches but I couldn’t remember which damper was for what, so I opened all of them to be on the safe side. I lit the fire and thought about how cosy it looks when you’re arriving home and there’s smoke coming out of the chimney.
There was smoke all right, but it didn’t go up into the chimney. First it came curling out from the edges of the stove plates, then from all sides of the stove. All of a sudden, the whole kitchen was full of smoke. I opened and shut the hatch, added fuel to the fire, opened the dampers wider – nothing helped. How on earth could I put the fire out? Should I throw water on it? I pulled the charred logs out and a whole load of ash spilled out with them. Smoke poured out of the hatch into the room and pushed its way through every joint of the stove. Quite a lot of joints, a stove has.
The chimney had to be blocked. What could have dropped into it? What if the chimney caught fire, if there was a dead gull in there? My eyes were stinging because I’d been running around in the smoke; my hair and everything else stank of it. I knocked my head on the brick dome of the stove and I was too embarrassed to call Pekka.
By the time he finally got home, I had managed to get rid of some of the smoke. I had opened all the doors and the room temperature was down to sixteen. I was lying in the bedroom; there’s an electric heater in there.
That evening, Pekka showed me a circular hatch on the side of the wood stove. When you open it, you find an empty tuna-fish tin in the flue. You pour a drop of lighter fuel in and leave it burning in the flue for a quarter of an hour. Then the chimney warms up and starts drawing.
Today, as I was going through the washing, I found three pairs of bloodstained knickers in the laundry basket. The small scrunched-up bundles had been pushed right to the bottom.
I went to the bathroom, where Pekka and the girl were brushing their teeth. I don’t know why they always do that at the same time, but that’s the habit they’ve got into. Neither of them locks the toilet door – they walk in just like that even though someone else might be in there already. Sometimes the girl comes in to brush her teeth while I’m in the middle of doing a wee. Sometimes all three of us have our morning wash at the same time. ‘Not enough room in here,’ says the girl. I’ve half a mind to say, ‘It’s not really meant to hold a crowd.’ Sometimes I lock the door but that seems to blow their minds. They’re all like rattling the handle and asking if you’re doing a poo! They can’t seem to get it into their heads that you might just want to wash your face in peace.
‘Have you started your periods?’ I ask.
‘S’pose,’ the girl answers through toothpaste.
Pekka looks at the girl and then at me, and finally at the scrunched-up knickers in my hand. He’s got a surprised expression on his face.
The girl spits and gargles.
‘Your daughter has started her periods,’ I say to Pekka. And then, all of a sudden, I feel like crying. I don’t know where that’s come from; I just carry on clutching the knickers.
Pekka stands there with the towel against his cheek, glancing at both of us in turn. Clearly, he doesn’t know what to do.
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he asks the girl then.
‘I don’t know,’ she answers.
‘Surely you could have told us,’ I say.
I feel so sad. Doesn’t she dare talk to us? Doesn’t she like being here? Does she miss her mum? How can I breathe some life into her?
‘You can talk to us about anything,’ I say, and again I feel like crying. Who am I to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t talk about? I’m ashamed. I don’t even glance at Pekka. Please, someone, say that to me. Go on, tell me everything, you can tell me everything.
‘Get dressed and we’ll go shopping,’ I say to the girl. Then I hand Pekka the washing.
‘Put them to soak, will you. Do you remember what towels Hannele used?’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, I just thought…I don’t want to intrude…’
‘Are you saying there’s something…hereditary about it?’
‘No, no,’ I answer.
Pekka looks at the shelf. Then he shakes his head. ‘They went to the dump. It might have been a purple pack?’
The girl and I get ready to go. She agrees to come with me and even allows me a little hug. She ties my shoelaces because I can’t reach them myself any more.
Pekka stays behind in the bathroom to do the laundry. I look at his back as he stands in front of the washbasin.