And maybe in the end that's what everything, all of this, is about.

"And my mum?" Green-eyes nods again. Elsa squints at her. "Alf says you were best friends." She nods again. Elsa wonders how that would feel. To have a best friend who's your own age. Then she stands in silence beside the policewoman and watches the sun come up. It's going to be a beautiful Christmas Eve, despite everything that's happened. She clears her throat and heads back to the front entrance, stopping with her hand on the door handle.

The policewoman scans along the house wall and over the little street.

"Everyone knew your grandmother."

"Hello," offers Elsa.

You have to believe. Granny always said that. You have to believe in something in order to understand the tales. "It's not important what exactly you believe in, but there's got to be something, or you may as well forget the whole damned thing."

Green-eyes smiles. Elsa wraps the scarf around herself.

"You're not much of a talker, are you?"

"Did you know my granny?"

Green-eyes nods, silently.

Elsa finds her Gryffindor scarf in the snow outside the house, where she dropped it when she charged at Sam the night before. The green-eyed policewoman is standing a few yards away. The sun has hardly risen. The snow sounds like popcorn popping as she walks over it.

"Why not?"

Green-eyes smiles without looking happy.

"Him or us?" Elsa asks reproachfully.

"I hope not."

"Both."

"It was you and Mum, wasn't it -- the golden knights who saved the Telling Mountain from the Noween and the fears. And built Miaudacas. It was you and Mum."

"Have you been on guard here all night?"

She nods again.

"When I was small your grandmother used to say that if you become a police officer, you can't choose who to protect. You have to try to protect everyone."

"What is your job, then?"

"Will you kill Sam if he comes back?"

"Because I was afraid of everything when I was small. And she told me I should do what I was most afraid of. I should laugh at my fears."

"Because it's not my job to kill."

Elsa nods, as if this confirms what she already knew.

"Why?"

The policewoman raises her eyebrows imperceptibly.

"She's the one who made me want to become one."

"Did she know you wanted to become a policewoman?" asks Elsa.

"He's the one who's dangerous. Not us."

"To protect."

Green-eyes starts smiling. Genuinely, this time.

Green-eyes looks directly at her. She smiles again in the real way.

"We were many things in your grandmother's fairy tales, I think."

Elsa opens the door, puts her foot in the opening, and stops there.

"You're smart. She always said you were the smartest girl she ever met."

"Your grandmother."

"You're one of the children on her bedroom ceiling, aren't you?"

Elsa nods. The door closes behind her. And it ends up being a beautiful Christmas Eve. Despite everything.

She looks for the wurse in the cellar storage unit and in Renault, but they are both empty. She knows the wardrobe in Granny's flat is also empty, and the wurse is definitely not in Mum and George's flat because no healthy being can stand being there on a Christmas morning. Mum is even more efficient than usual at Christmas.

"Did you know my mum first or my granny?"

She normally starts her Christmas shopping in May each year. She says it's because she's "organized," but Granny used to disagree and say it was actually because she was "anal," and then Elsa used to have to wear her headphones for quite a long time. But this year Mum decided to be a bit free-spirited and crazy, so she waited until the first of August before asking what Elsa wanted for Christmas. She was very angry when Elsa refused to tell her, even though Elsa expressly asked if she understood how much someone changes as a person in half a year when they're almost eight. So Mum did what Mum always does: she went and bought a present on her own initiative. And it went as it usually went: to hell. Elsa knew that because she knew where Mum hid her presents. What do you expect when you buy an almost-eight-year-old her present five months early?

"Merry Christmas!" says Elsa without answering the question.

Elsa has become very attached to this tradition.

"I'm sleeping," he grunts.

So this year, Elsa is getting three books that are about different themes in some way or other touched upon by various characters in the Harry Potter books. They're wrapped in a paper that Elsa likes very much. Elsa knows that because Mum's first present was utterly useless and when Elsa informed her of that in October they argued for about a month and then Elsa's mum gave up and gave Elsa money instead, so she could go and buy "what you want, then!" And then she wrapped them in a paper she liked very much. And put the parcel in Mum's not-so-secret place and praised Mum for again being so considerate and sensitive that she knew exactly what Elsa wanted this year. And then Mum called Elsa a "Grinch."

She rings Alf's bell half a dozen times before he opens. He's got his dressing gown on, his irritated expression, and his Juventus coffee cup.

"What's the matter?" he barks.

Alf takes a sip of his coffee.

"It's Christmas Eve morning," Elsa informs him.

"Because it's here."

"It's not the middle of the night. And it's Christmas!"

"I asked first," Elsa insists.

"Why didn't you say so?"

"How?"

"I know that as well." Alf nods casually.

"I do know that," he says.

He drinks some more coffee. She kicks his doormat irritably.

Elsa peers into Alf's flat. The wurse is sitting on the floor, lapping at something in a big metal bowl in front of it. It says Juventus on it. The metal bowl, that is.

"I was up late last night."

"Yes."

"I just bloody did."

Elsa's eyebrows shoot up as if they just sat down in wet paint.

"I'm not the one standing at your door in the middle of the night!"

"Why is it here?"

"Why are you sleeping, then?"

"What are you doing here?"

"The wurse is here?"

"Because Kent came home at five this morning, and it couldn't sit on the stairs. Kent would have bloody called the police if he'd found out it was still in the house."

"Doing what?"

"I can't find the wurse."

"Because I was in the garage when he arrived in his bastard BMW," says Alf impatiently.

"Alf, did you give the wurse… coffee?"

"Until five o'clock, I bloody said," he grunts.

Alf scratches his scalp, which, for him, is the same thing as scratching his hair. Then he adjusts his dressing gown. Elsa notices that he has a thick scar running across his chest. He sees her noticing and looks grumpy about it.

"How long did you wait?"

Alf goes into his bedroom and closes the door, and when he comes out again he is wearing his leather jacket with the taxi badge. Even though it's Christmas Eve. They have to let the wurse pee in the garage, because there are even more police outside the building now, and not even a wurse can hold out for very long after drinking a bowl of coffee.

"Yes," says Alf, and looks as if he can't understand what could reasonably be wrong about that.

Elsa thinks about giving him a hug, but leaves it. The wurse peers up from the metal bowl, looking enormously pleased. Something black is dripping from its nose. Elsa turns to Alf.

"How do you know what time Kent came home?"

"I was waiting for him."

"What were you doing in the garage?" asks Elsa patiently.

"It's an ANIMAL! Why did you give it COFFEE?"

Alf looks as if that is an incredibly stupid question.

When they come up, Mum and George's flat smells of Swiss meringues and pasta gratin with béarnaise sauce, because Mum has decided that everyone in the house is having Christmas together this year. No one disagreed with her, partly because it was a good idea, and partly because no one ever disagrees with Mum. And then George suggested that everyone should make their own favorite dish for a Christmas buffet. He's good like that, George, which infuriates Elsa.

And then Maud and Lennart thought it was important that the woman in the black skirt also felt involved, because they're good like that, so they asked if she wanted to prepare anything in particular. She just sat glued to her chair at the far end of the flat and looked very embarrassed and mumbled that she hadn't cooked any food for several years. "You don't cook very much when you live alone," she explained. And then Maud looked very upset and apologized for being so insensitive. And then the woman in the black skirt felt so sorry for Maud that she made a pasta gratin with béarnaise sauce. Because that was her boys' favorite dish. So they all have Swiss meringue and pasta gratin with béarnaise sauce, because that's the sort of Christmas it is. In spite of it all.

Granny would have loved that one. Peeing in the garage. It will drive Britt-Marie to distraction.

The boy with a syndrome's favorite food is Swiss meringue, so his mum made it for him. Well, his mum got out all the ingredients and Lennart picked all the meringues up off the floor and Maud made the actual Swiss meringue while the boy and his mother were dancing.

The woman in the black skirt sits in silence at the table, in the far corner. After they've eaten, while George is washing up and Maud wiping down the tables and Lennart sitting on a stool with a standby cup of coffee, waiting for the percolator and making sure it's not going to get up to any tricks, the boy with a syndrome goes through the flat and crosses the landing and goes into Granny's flat. When he comes back he has cinnamon bun crumbs all around his mouth and so many wurse hairs on his sweater that he looks like someone invited him to a fancy dress party and he decided to dress up as a carpet. He gets a blanket from Elsa's room and walks up to the woman in the black skirt, looks at her for a long time, then reaches up, standing on his tiptoes, and pinches her nose. Startled, she jumps, and the boy's mother makes the sort of scream that mothers make when their children pinch complete strangers' noses and rushes towards him. But Maud gently catches hold of her arm and stops her, and when the boy holds up his thumb, poking out between his index finger and his middle finger, while looking at the woman in the black skirt, Maud explains pleasantly: "It's a game. He's pretending he stole your nose."

The wurse gets two buckets of cinnamon buns from Maud, and George goes to the cellar to fetch up the bathing tub Elsa had when she was a baby and fills it with mulled wine. With this as an incentive, the wurse agrees to hide for an hour in the wardrobe in Granny's flat, and then Mum goes down and invites the police up from outside the house. Green-eyes sits next to Mum. They laugh. The summer intern is there too; he eats the most Swiss meringue of them all and falls asleep on the sofa.

The woman stares at Maud. Stares at the boy. Stares at the nose. And then she steals his nose. And he laughs so loudly that the windows start rattling. He falls asleep in her lap, wrapped up in the blanket. When his mother, with an apologetic smile, tries to lift him off, observing as she does so that "it's actually not at all like him to be so direct," the woman in the black skirt touches her hand tremulously and whispers: "If… if it's all right I… could I hold him a little longer…?"

George makes more mulled wine and everything feels almost normal and not at all frightening. After the police have thanked them for their hospitality and headed back down the stairs, Maud looks unhappily at Elsa and says she can understand it must have been frightening for a child to have police in the house on Christmas Eve. But Elsa takes her by the hand and says: "Don't worry, Maud. This is a Christmas tale. They always have a happy ending."

And it's clear that Maud believes it.

The boy's mother puts both her hands around the woman's hand and nods. The woman puts her forehead against the boy's hair and whispers: "Thanks."

Because you have to believe.