I couldn't find the book for a while. Sorry. On the bright side, I've clean forgotten the first seven chapters of The Awakened Heart, which should make this blog post more fun to write.
Sophie's upset because her husband (whose long Dutch name I've forgotten) was spotted with an attractive woman in his car. Because Betts heroines are always stupid about these things, she immediately assumes the worst, and hops on a bus to go home.
Her husband (Rijk! That's his name!) picks her up at the bus stop, without mentioning the Mysterious Woman, and drops her off at home. He tells her he has a meeting, and that she shouldn't wait up. Chillingly, both he and Sophie understand that his "don't wait up" isn't a polite phrase, it's a directive (p. 153: "She went to bed early because he had made it clear that he didn't expect to see her when he got home").
The next day Rijk gives her a cheque-book that shows how large her quarterly allowance is. She's shocked, but he makes it clear that she can't be seen too often in the same dress. What happened to having a good, serviceable wardrobe?
Sophie feeds the dog chocolate! Surely that's not good for him? More to the point, "he expected it", so clearly he's in the habit of eating it. Aren't these people medical professionals?
This is a killing-time chapter. Sophie spends it puttering around the house and village, feeding the dog chocolate, and saving a small child from a freezing lake. Actually, she does no such thing - she sees that he's in there, goes in there herself, and sends the dog to Rijk for help. Good thing the chocolate hadn't made the dog too sick to move. After her recovery, she hears Rijk on the phone, talking to Irena about dinner that evening (Irena will, of course, turn out to be the woman in the car) .
The most interesting thing in the chapter is a revelation from Rauke, the manservant, that he and Rijk's father were in the underground resistance together during WWII.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
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