Elsa's granny lived in another rhythm from other people. She operated in a different way. In the real world, in relation to everything that functioned, she was chaotic. But when the real world crumbles, when everything turns into chaos, then people like Elsa's granny can sometimes be the only ones who stay functional. That was another of her superpowers. When Granny was headed for some far-off place, you could only be sure of one thing: that it was a place everyone else was trying to get away from. And if anyone asked her why she was doing it, she'd answer, "I'm a doctor, for God's sake, and ever since I became one I've not allowed myself the luxury of choosing whose life I should be saving."

So many hearts broke the day Elsa was born. Shattered with such force by the wave that the shards of glass were dispersed all around the world. Improbable catastrophes produce improbable things in people, improbable sorrow and improbable heroism. More death than human senses can comprehend. Two boys carrying their mother to safety and then turning back for their father. Because a family does not leave anyone behind. And yet, in the end, that is precisely what they did, her boys. Left her alone.

She wasn't big on efficiency and economics, Granny, but everyone listened to her when there was chaos. The other doctors wouldn't be seen dead with her on a good day, but when the world collapsed into pieces they followed her like an army. Because improbable tragedies create improbable superheroes.

And then Granny had squeezed her forefingers hard and replied, "Then we do what everyone does, we do everything we can." Elsa had crept up into her lap and asked: "But what can we do?" And then Granny had kissed her hair and held her hard, hard, hard and whispered: "We pick up as many children as we can carry, and we run as fast as we can."

Once, late one night when they were on their way to Miamas, Elsa had asked Granny about it, about how it felt to be somewhere when the world crumbles. And how it was being in the Land-of-Almost-Awake during the War-Without-End and what it was like when they saw that wave breaking over the ninety-nine snow-angels. And Granny had answered: "It's like the very worst thing you could dream up, worked out by the most evil thing you could imagine and multiplied by a figure you can't even imagine." Elsa had been very afraid that night, and she had asked Granny what they would do if one day their world crumbled around them.

The day Elsa was born, Granny was far away. In a war. She had been there for months, but was on her way to an aircraft. On her way home. That was when she heard about the wave in another place even farther away, from which everyone was in desperate flight. So she went, because they needed her. She had time to help many children escape death, but not the boys of the woman with the black skirt. So she brought home the woman with the black skirt instead.

Elsa and Mum sit in Kia. It's morning and there's a traffic jam. Snowflakes as big as pillowcases are falling on the windshield.

"I'm good at running," Elsa had whispered.

Elsa can't remember the last time she heard Mum tell such a long story. Mum hardly ever tells stories, but this one was so long that Mum fell asleep in the middle of it last night and had to pick it up in the car on the way to school.

"Me too," Granny had whispered back.

"Why was it her last journey?" asks Elsa.

"That was your grandmother's last journey," says Mum. "She came home after that."

She sighs, and regret floods her gaze.

Mum smiles with an emotional combination of melancholy and joy that only she in the entire world has fully mastered.

"I've never spoken much to her. I don't think anyone in the house wanted to ask too many questions. We let your grandmother handle it. And then…"

"She got a new job." And then she looks as if she is remembering something unexpected. As if the memory just fell out of a cracked vase. "You were born prematurely. They were concerned about your heart so we had to stay at the hospital for several weeks with you. Granny came back with her on the same day we came home…"

Elsa realizes that she means the woman in the black skirt. Mum clutches Kia's steering wheel hard.

"Does it make me a terrible person that I've forgotten?"

Mum turns to Elsa. Tries unsuccessfully to smile.

"… then the years just went by. And we were busy. And now she's just someone who lives in our house. To be quite honest with you, I'd forgotten that was how she first moved in. You two moved in on the same day…"

"How often did Granny go away?" she asks instead.

Elsa shakes her head. She was going to say something about The Monster and the wurse, but she doesn't because she's worried Mum won't let her see them anymore if she knows. Mums can have a lot of strange principles when it comes to social interaction between their children and monsters and wurses. Elsa understands that everyone is scared of them, and that it will take a long time to make them all understand that The Monster and the wurse -- like the drunk -- are not what they seem.

A silver-colored car behind them sounds its horn when she allows a space to develop between her and the car in front. Mum releases the brake and Kia slowly rolls forward.

"Was that what you meant that time Granny said you became an economist just to spite her?"

"It varied. It depended on where she was needed, and for how long."

The car behind them sounds its horn again.

"I heard you. Like a mega-long time ago. When Granny said you became an economist because you were in teenage rebellion. And you said, 'How do you know? You were never here!' That was what you meant, wasn't it?"

Elsa fiddles with the rubber seal in the door.

"What?"

"Maybe."

"Is that why you were always arguing?"

"Yes. Yes, sometimes it was probably for that reason we were arguing. But sometimes it was about other things. Your grandmother and I were very… different."

"And Granny left you?"

The car behind Kia beeps its horn again. Mum closes her eyes and holds her breath. And only when she finally releases the hand brake and lets Kia roll forward does she release the word from her lips, as if it had to force its way through.

"Your grandmother went where she was needed, darling."

"Not you. You never lose control."

"I was angry, Elsa. Sometimes it's hard to control what you say, when you're angry."

"Twelve."

"How old were you when Grandfather died?"

Mum sighs deeply as only a parent who has just realized that she has strayed considerably further into a story than she was intending is capable of sighing.

"With your grandmother it was… more difficult."

"No. You were just different in different ways."

"Others needed her more."

"What else did you argue about?"

"Didn't you need her though?"

Mum tries to smile again.

"It's complicated," says Elsa, even though it isn't really, if one has read enough quality literature.

"Insane." Elsa nods in agreement.

She decides not to point out that Jean Grey can also do telekinesis, because she doesn't want to make things more complicated than necessary for Mum right now. She is pregnant, after all.

"A superhero. From X-Men. Wolverine and Cyclops both loved her. So they argued so much about her, it was totally insane."

"Why?"

So instead, Elsa pulls the rubber seal on the door. Peers down into the gap. She is incredibly tired, as tired as an almost-eight-year-old gets after staying up all night feeling angry. Elsa's mum never had a mum of her own, because Granny was always somewhere else, to help someone else. Elsa has never thought of Granny in that way.

"So what kind of superpower does this Jean Grey have, then?"

"Telepathy."

"Good superpower."

"I thought those X-Men were mutants, not superheroes. Isn't that what you said last time we spoke about them?"

"Like Jean Grey," Elsa observes, as if it were absolutely obvious.

"Because when you love someone very much, it's difficult to learn to share her with someone else."

"Who?"

"You. We always argued about you, darling."

"No, my darling, darling girl. Never. Never!"

Elsa snorts.

"Never angry…" whispers Mum, and reaches across the seat before she adds, in a whisper: "Jealous."

Elsa nods and looks down again into the gap in the door.

"Everyone has secrets, darling."

"So that's what Granny meant," she states.

"Are you angry with me because Granny and I had secrets?" She thinks about the secret language, which they always spoke so Mum wouldn't understand. She thinks about the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and wonders if Granny ever took Mum there.

"She said I'd hate her if I found out who she was before I was born. That's what she meant. That I'd find out that she was a crappy mum who left her own child --"

"I'm angry with her. For not telling the truth."

Mum shakes her head so quickly and vehemently that Elsa immediately understands whatever she's about to say will be a lie.

The feeling of guilt hits Elsa like cold water when you're least expecting it.

"What did she say?" Mum asks.

"Are you angry with me because Granny was so much with me and never with you?" she asks carefully.

Elsa defiantly pulls at the rubber seal.

"Yeah, until he died!"

"So why is she such a nightmare to you now, then?"

"But she left you by yourself. All those times she went off, she left you on your own, didn't she?"

And when Elsa doesn't answer, Mum puts her hand against Elsa's cheek and whispers, "All daughters are angry with their mothers about something. But she was a good grandmother, Elsa. She was the most fantastic grandmother anyone could imagine."

"I had your grandfather when I was small."

"She didn't leave me. You mustn't hate your granny, darling."

"What neighbors?" Elsa wants to know.

The car behind beeps its horn. Mum makes an apologetic gesture at the back window and Kia rolls forward.

"When he died I had the neighbors."

"Britt-Marie," says Mum at last.

Elsa stops fiddling with the rubber seal in the door. "What do you mean, Britt-Marie?"

"She took care of me."

Mum turns to her with eyes so shiny that Elsa can see her own reflection in them.

Elsa's eyebrows sink into a scowling V-shape.

"Yes, until someone explains it to you! But when I asked Granny about it, she always changed the subject. And when I ask Dad, he says, 'Eh… eh… what do you want? You want an ice cream? You can have an ice cream!' "

Mum sighs through her nose.

"It's complicated."

The car behind them beeps its horn again.

Mum blinks so slowly that her eyes are closed.

"Is that why Granny isn't in any of the old photos at home?" asks Elsa.

"What?"

"She's still an idiot."

"Granny isn't in any of the photos from before I was born. When I was small I thought it was because she was a vampire, because they can't be seen in photos, and they can smoke as much as they want without getting a sore throat. But she wasn't a vampire, was she? She was just never at home."

"People can turn into idiots if they're alone for long enough," agrees Mum.

"Britt-Marie wasn't always like that. She's just… lonely."

Elsa goes back to fiddling with the rubber seal on the door.

"But she is!"

"Don't say that, Elsa."

"There are many ways of being alone, darling."

"She's got Kent!"

"Was Granny a vampire or not?"

Elsa can't understand how anyone can be in such a hurry to move five yards in a traffic jam. She looks in the rearview mirror at the man in the car behind them. He seems to think the traffic jam is being caused by Elsa's mum. Elsa wishes with every fiber of her being that Mum would do what she did when she was pregnant with Elsa, and get out of the car and roar at the guy and tell him enough's bloody enough.

"Your granny traveled around the world saving children's lives, darling. She was a…"

"A superhero! Your granny was a superhero!"

"Superheroes don't leave their own children."

The car behind them beeps its horn again. Mum's hand shoots up apologetically towards the back window, and Kia rolls forward a few yards. Elsa realizes that she's sitting there hoping Mum will start yelling. Or crying. Or anything. She just wants to see her feel something.

But both she and Elsa know she doesn't mean it.

Mum suddenly laughs explosively. Elsa does a mean impersonation of her dad.

"Your dad doesn't exactly like conflict." Mum giggles.

"All superheroes have to make sacrifices, darling," she tries at last.

Mum looks as if she's looking for the right word. And once she finds it, she brightens and smiles radiantly.

Elsa stares down into the cavity in the door.

Mum is silent.

And she misses someone who gets out and shouts at men in silver-colored cars.

Elsa's father told that story. He almost never tells stories, but one Midsummer Eve -- at the time when Mum was looking sadder and sadder and going to bed earlier and earlier and Dad sat on his own in the kitchen at night and reorganized the icons on Mum's computer screen and cried -- they were at a party together, all three of them. And then Dad drank three beers and told a story about how Mum, while heavily pregnant with Elsa, got out of the car and went up to a man in a silver car and threatened to "give birth here and now on his sodding hood if he honked at her again!" Everyone laughed a lot at that story. Not Dad, of course, because he's not a big fan of laughing. But Elsa saw that even he found it funny. He danced with Mum that Midsummer. That was the last time Elsa saw them dancing together. Dad is spectacularly bad at dancing; he looks like a very large bear that has just got up and realizes its foot has gone to sleep. Elsa misses it.

When he doesn't answer right away, she slams the book down again three more times, and points at him menacingly.

The man in the silver car stares at her as if he can't quite believe what just happened.

"ENOUGH, you muppet!"

The man in the silver-colored car behind them beeps again. Elsa picks up her backpack from the floor, gets out the heaviest book she can find, throws the door open, and jumps out onto the highway. She hears Mum shouting for her to come back, but without turning around she runs towards the silver car and slams the book as hard as she can into its hood. It leaves a big dent. Elsa's hands are shaking.

"Do you get that my mum is PREGNANT?"

Elsa hears the click of the doors locking.

"One more peep and my mum comes out and gives birth to Halfie on YOUR BLOODY HOOD!" roars Elsa.

At first, the man looks as if he's going to open the door. But then he seems to change his mind, and watches in amazement as she pummels the hood with her book.

She stays where she is on the highway between the silver car and Kia, hyperventilating, until she gets a headache. She hears Mum yelling, and Elsa is actually on her way back into Kia, she really is. It's not as if she planned all this. But then she feels a hand on her shoulder and hears a voice, asking: "Do you need help?"

"I mean, it's not…" Elsa begins.

And when she turns around there's a policeman standing over her.

"He keeps beeping his horn at us!" Elsa says defensively.

The summer-intern policeman looks at the man in the silver car. The man inside the car is now terrifically busy not looking back. Elsa turns towards Kia, and she really doesn't mean to say it, it's almost as if the words accidentally fall out of her mouth.

"Your mother's in labor?" he asks, visibly tightening.

"Can we help you?" he says again in a friendly tone of voice.

"Are you able to drive? Or…?" shouts the policeman so loudly that Elsa irately shoves her fingers in her ears and moves demonstratively to the other side of Kia.

But of course it's too late.

The policeman runs up to Kia. Mum has managed to get out with great effort, and is on her way towards them with her hand against Halfie.

He looks very young. As if he's only working as a policeman as a summer job. Even though it's winter.

"My mum's about to give birth and we're sort of having a hard day here --"

Mum thumps back into the seat. Looks at Elsa. Elsa searches the glove compartment for a reason not to have to look back at her.

"I think he wants you to follow him," mumbles Elsa without looking up.

"I didn't! But no one ever listens to me!"

"Why did you tell him I was about to give birth?"

"What's going on?" whispers Mum while Kia carefully potters along behind the patrol car.

"What? Or what? Of course I can drive. Or what? Is there something wro --"

Mum looks slightly as if she's been caught off balance.

The patrol car thunders past with its sirens turned on. The summer-intern policeman waves frantically at them to follow behind.

"I'll go on ahead!" yells the policeman without listening to the end of the sentence, shoving Mum back into Kia and running back to his patrol car.

"Right! And what should I do now, do you think?" hisses Mum back, sounding possibly a bit less self-controlled now.

"I guess he's escorting us to the hospital, because he thinks you're about to, y'know, give birth," mumbles Elsa into the glove compartment.

"OH, REALLY, YOU THINK SO?!" Mum roars in a way that is neither pedagogical nor especially self-controlled.

Elsa chooses not to enter into a discussion of whether Mum is being sarcastic or ironic there.

"Well, we've been driving behind him for ages now, so he'll probably get quite pissed if he finds out you're not actually going to give birth for real," Elsa states pedagogically.

They stop outside the hospital's emergency entrance and Mum attempts to get out of the car and confess everything to the summer-intern policeman. But he pushes her back into the car and yells that he's going to fetch help. Mum looks mortified. This is her hospital. She's the boss here.

Mum doesn't answer. Elsa clears her throat again.

"This is going to be a nightmare to explain to the staff," she mumbles and rests her forehead in despair against the steering wheel.

"Maybe you could say it was some sort of exercise?" Elsa suggests.

Mum smiles faintly and turns her head so her ear is on the steering wheel. They look at each other for a long time.

"Granny would have thought this was fun."

"What?" Mum exclaims.

Elsa nods slowly. Mum caresses her arm. Elsa opens and closes the glove compartment. Then she looks up as if she's just thought of something, but mostly because she'd like to change the subject, because she doesn't want to think about how angry she is with Granny right now.

"I'm not a mum!"

"Don't swear," says Elsa.

"What job was it?" she asks, mainly so she doesn't have to think about it.

Elsa opens and closes the glove compartment a few times. Looks up at the hospital façade. Behind one of those windows, she slept in the same bed as Granny the night Granny went off to Miamas for the last time. It feels like forever ago. Feels like forever since Elsa managed to get to Miamas on her own.

"You're always swearing!"

Mum smiles again. "Touché."

"You said that thing with the tsunami was Granny's last journey because she had found a new job. What job was it?"

Mum's fingertips brush against Elsa's when she whispers the answer. "As a grandmother. She got a job as a grandmother. She never went away again."

"She would have found it bloody funny," agrees Mum.

"Why not?"

Mum dabs her eyes. "They were never married, darling."

Elsa shrugs. "We have to talk about something while we're waiting for the policeman to come back with the people you're the boss of and everything gets mega-embarrassing for you…"

Mum looks unhappy again. Elsa fiddles with the rubber seal. Realizes that it was obviously too early to start making jokes about it.

"Did Granddad and Granny run low on love as well?" she asks, when Mum has finished laughing.

"It's my own theory."

Mum laughs very loudly, without any warning. Elsa grins.

"How do you mean?"

"Don't people get married because they're full of love and then divorced when they run out of it?" she says in a low voice.

"Did you learn that one in school?"

Mum leans back. Pulls her fingers through her hair and shakes her head.

"Your granny was special, Elsa. She was difficult to live with."

"Why are you asking?"

"Did you and Dad get divorced because you ran out of love?" she asks so quickly that the question actually surprises her.

Mum goes quiet. Elsa raises her eyebrows as a way of telling her to get to the point.

Mum massages her eyelids.

Elsa shrugs. "It's complicated," she says.

"Did she have many boyfriends?"

"It's difficult to explain. But in those days it can't have been so common for women to be like her. I mean… it can't have been so common for anyone to be like her. It wasn't common for women to become doctors in those days, for example. As for surgeons, forget it. The academic world would have been quite different… so…"

"I think if your granny had been a man of her generation rather than a woman, she would have been called a 'playboy.' "

"Oh, well I wouldn't want to suggest that the girl in your school is a --" says Mum, feverishly backtracking.

"Yes," says Mum cautiously.

"There's someone in my school who has many boyfriends," states Elsa.

Even though it really isn't. But Mum doesn't look massively less confused.

"He's a boy," Elsa corrects.

Mum looks confused.

Elsa is silent for a long while. Then she nods soberly.

"She was a fantastic grandmother, Elsa. You were all her second chances," says Mum and caresses Elsa's hair as she goes on: "I think your grandmother functioned so well in chaotic places because she was herself chaotic. She was always amazing in the midst of a catastrophe. It was just all this, everyday life and normality, that she didn't quite know how to handle. "And it was just… I mean… the reason there aren't any old photos of Granny is partly because she wasn't home very often. And slightly because I tore up all the ones there were."

"I get it," says Elsa, because she has the Internet.

"I'm sorry that Granny was a crappy mum, Mum!"

"Your granddad loved your granny very much. But they were never a… couple. Do you understand?"

Then she reaches out and takes Mum's index fingers and squeezes them in her hands.

"Why?"

"I was a teenager. And angry. The two belong together. There was always chaos at home. Bills that didn't get paid and food that went off in the fridge when we actually had food, and sometimes no food at all, and… God. It's hard to explain, darling. I was just angry."

Mum's lips fold in on themselves.

"People shouldn't have children if they don't want to take care of them."

Mum shrugs. "I taught myself to fix things on my own, that's all. Because I didn't trust your grandmother. In the end, things were even worse when she was actually here. I was angry at her when she was away, and even angrier when she was home."

"An accident."

"In that case, I'm an accident as well."

Elsa presses her chin down over her wishbone.

"So you were a mistake?"

Mum reaches out, touches her shoulder with her fingertips.

"Your granny was old when she had me. Or, what I mean is, she was as old as I was when I had you. But that was old in Granny's times. And she didn't think she could have children. She'd had herself tested."

"No one has ever wanted something as much as your father and I wanted you, darling. You're about as far from an accident as anyone can get."

Elsa looks up at Kia's ceiling and blinks the haziness out of her eyes.

Elsa crosses her arms and leans back in her seat and glares out of the window.

"Is that why order is your superpower? Because you don't want to be like Granny?"

Elsa's jaw is trembling.

"I'm angry too… I'm angry because she lied about being sick and no one told me and now I know and I still miss her and THAT makes me angry!!!"

"Me too," whispers Mum.

"I'm angry with her for dying. I'm angry with her for dying and disappearing from me," she whispers.

Elsa turns a couple of inches towards Mum. Mum turns a couple of inches towards Elsa.

"What do you think your granny would have done now?" asks Mum calmly.

Mum shuts her eyelids tight and puts her forehead against Elsa's forehead.

And that is when the summer-intern policeman comes charging out of the emergency doors. He has two nurses with a stretcher running behind him.

"She would have cleared out," says Elsa, still with her forehead against Mum's forehead.

The summer-intern policeman and the nurses with the stretcher are only a few yards from the car when Mum slowly nods. Then she puts Kia into gear and, with the tires spinning in the snow, skids out into the road and drives off. It's the most irresponsible thing Elsa has ever seen her mother do.

She'll always love her for it.