‘Neither of us,’ Hanne Wilhelmsen said quietly. ‘Not yet.’ The American president was sitting on a bright red sofa with a glass of water in her hand. The smell of excrement, urine and fear was so strong that Mary, without any particular discretion, had opened the sitting room window as far as it would go. ‘The lady needs a bath,’ she fussed. ‘Can’t understand how she can just sit there happily with that horrible smell. A president and all, and we have to humiliate her like that.’ ‘Now calm down,’ Hanne said in a firm voice. ‘Of course the lady will have a bath. And I’m sure she’ll be hungry soon too. Go and make something warm, please. Soup. Don’t you think that would be best? A good soup?’ Mary’s slippers slapped out of the room and she muttered to herself all the way to the kitchen. Even when she had closed the door, they could still hear short bursts of her barking in amongst the noise of pots and pans being thumped on to the draining board.
