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hear the sounds of children crying and voices. I don’t recognize the sing-song language: it’s not Danish.
    Even up here I can hear loud drunken voices. There’s a particularly loud shout and a bang, as though someone has overturned a table. I shiver with fear, and look for a key in the lock of my door. There isn’t one. I drag a small chest across the floorboards and push it against the door. It will have to do.
    I climb between the grey, musty sheets and blow out my candle. I feel empty and numb with tiredness. Footsteps go back and forth along the corridor outside my room. I hold my breath each time until they pass. In the next room a baby wails. As I lie sinking into sleep, I push away the anxiety I have about tomorrow, and remind myself instead how far I’ve come. How well I have managed by myself.
    The next thing I know, sunshine is pouring into my room and I can hear the familiar cry of gulls in the distance. A thrill goes through me, and I jump out of bed. Today I hope to reach Skagen.

EIGHT
     
    ‘I need to go to Skagen, not America!’ I say again. The landlady of this dreadful place seems to be taking it as a personal insult that I don’t wish to board the ferry to America. She repeats the word indignantly over and over again.
    ‘ Ja, ja! Amerika! ’ She points out to the harbour again, where a large ship lies at berth. Most of my fellow lodgers, who are from Sweden, I’ve discovered, are already heading down there. They lug suitcases, bundles, and in some cases, children.
    They are like me, I think. They are seeking a new life.
    ‘No! Skagen,’ I insist.
    I show her my piece of paper with ‘Skagen’ written on it.
    She squints at it briefly, and looks back at me. I suspect she can’t read it.
    She sighs however, and flounces out from behind the greasy counter, beckoning me to follow her.
    The back door hangs crazily, half off its hinges. We go through it into a stinking backyard. Piles of refuse and horse droppings lie rotting on the cobbles. A man is unloading peat from a rickety cart. A scrawny-looking brown horse stands wearily in his harness, resting one foot.
    The landlady speaks to the man and their conversation rapidly escalates into a heated argument. I never heard such a strident voice as this woman has. She stands, feet planted firmly apart in her wooden clogs, dirty apron flapping in the wind, her hands on her hips, except when she wags a finger in the unfortunate man’s face. Half the town must be able to hear her.
    Whatever the argument is about, she clearly wins it. She turns to me with a triumphant smile, revealing two missing teeth.
    ‘ En krone! ’ she says, holding up one finger, the nail torn and filthy.
    ‘One krone?’ I have that much. Relief floods through me. I don’t know why she’s suddenly decided to help me, but I’m glad of it.
    The man, muttering darkly, stomps into the inn and comes back out with my trunk. He slings it roughly into the cart, where it picks up a generous coating of peat. Seeing this, the landlady boxes him on the ear and tells him off loudly. I’d love to know what she’s saying.
    She waves me enthusiastically towards the cart.
    ‘Skagen?’ I ask.
    She shakes her head, takes a stick and draws a line in the dirt. She points to one end and says Frederikshavn . That’s where we are now. ‘Skagen,’ she says, pointing to the other end of the line. Then she draws a mark midway between the two and says, ‘Ålbæk!’
    I nod my understanding. Halfway to Skagen. Well, that’s something.
    ‘ Tak ,’ I say to her, and she nods at me and disappears back into the building. I hand over the coin to the driver, wondering how he feels about having been forced into giving me a lift. He pockets my coin, without looking at me. Pulling his cap low over his forehead, he hoists himself up into the cart, leaving me to scramble up beside him as best I can.
    He slaps his reins on the horse’s back. The cart, empty now, but for my trunk, rattles over the