Chapter 6: Summary, Analysis, and Key Themes

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens on a Saturday, the day Roos's mother counts the week's earnings from her locked tin box and sends Roos out to run errands. Mama gives her a little pocket money, which Roos usually spends on treats for Ruth, who delights in bright, shiny, and sweet objects. Ruth keeps a collection of treasures in an empty cigar box: gilded Catholic saint cards, sea glass, an empty lipstick tube, a silver-striped candy wrapper, and parrot feathers.

Roos dreads these errands. The shopkeepers treat her with contempt, speaking to her slowly and loudly as if she were simple, or refusing to let her inside at all. Some make her stand on the threshold and call out her order, unwilling to touch her hand. Ruth accompanies her, holding her dead hand and whispering spiteful comments about the shopkeepers to distract her. Ruth has a particular hunger for cheap red lollipops that splinter as you suck them, cutting the gums and tongue; she relishes the taste of sugar mixed with blood.

The Saturday after the disastrous séance, Roos returns home with a lollipop shard lodged behind her molars. She struggles to remove it, gagging, her fingers coated with saliva and blood. After cleaning up, she finds her mother in the drawing room with Agnes Knoop. Agnes announces she has come to take Roos away and that she and Mama have been negotiating terms. Mama protests theatrically, claiming she loves Roos and cannot lose her only caretaker, but when Agnes writes a number on a slip of paper, Mama reads it greedily and demands more. Agnes writes a larger sum, and Mama accepts.

Roos is struck by the realization that her mother has sold her, as if she were a chair or a bag of potatoes. She had feared this since childhood, especially when Mr. Mesman began visiting, but she had hoped Mama cared for her. Ruth warns Roos to be careful, reminding her of the male spirit that accompanied Agnes to the séance. Roos packs her belongings: her clothes, Ruth's box of treasures, a bottle of ground-up glass, and the gifts and posthumous medal her father gave her before his ship was sunk during the war.

Mama comes to check on Roos, telling her she will be back within the year, that Agnes will grow bored of her, and that Roos has no skills and is too mad for any work. Roos retorts that Mama would have sold her to Mr. Mesman too, and that she is no better than a common bawd. When Mama tries to grab her arm, Ruth descends from the wardrobe, teeth bared. Roos warns Mama not to touch her, saying Ruth does not take kindly to people who hurt her, and that now that she has been sold, there is no reason to protect Mama from Ruth anymore. Mama pales and steps back.

Roos leaves with Agnes, who strokes her threadbare coat and promises to buy her proper clothes and a thick coat.

The chapter then shifts to a psychiatric transcript dated 8 October 1954, labeled as the fourth case episode for Patient R—, titled