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.’
    ‘You’re a bit out on the date.’ Adam Stubo laughed and ruffled his stepdaughter’s hair. ‘There are special songs for our national day too, you know. Do you know where my cufflinks are, Johanne?’
    She didn’t answer. If she had washed the first shirt and popped it in the tumble dryer, Kristiane could at least have started the party with clean clothes.
    ‘Look at this,’ she complained and showed the shirt to Adam.
    ‘Doesn’t really matter,’ he said and carried on looking for his cufflinks. ‘Kristiane has more white shirts in the cupboard.’
    ‘More white shirts?’ Johanne rolled her eyes. ‘Do you knowwhat my parents paid for this damn national costume? And do you know how offended my mother will be if we turn up with Kristiane in an ordinary shirt from H&M?’
    ‘
A child is born in Bethlehem
,’ Kristiane chanted. ‘
Hip-hip-hurrah!
’
    Adam took the shirt and examined the stains.
    ‘I’ll sort it out,’ he said. ‘In five minutes, with a bit of washing-up liquid and a hairdryer. And by the way, you underestimate your mother. There are few people who understand Kristiane better than her. Why don’t you get Ragnhild ready, so we can leave in quarter of an hour?’
    The sixteen-month-old baby was sitting in deep concentration, playing with her building blocks in a corner of the sitting room. She was unperturbed by her sister’s dancing and singing. With astonishing precision, she placed one block on top of another, and smiled when the tower was as high as her face.
    Johanne didn’t have the heart to disturb her. For a moment it struck her how different the two girls were. The older one thin and sensitive, the younger so very robust. Kristiane was difficult to understand; Ragnhild was healthy and direct. She lifted the block on top, saw her mother and grinned, revealing eight sparkling white teeth.
    ‘Cudduwl, Mummy. Agni cudduwl. Look!’
    ‘
On Christmas night all Christians sing
,’ Kristiane sang, clear as a bell.
    Johanne picked her elder daughter up. She was happy to be held like a baby, lying in her mother’s arms with not a stitch on her body.
    ‘It’s not Christmas,’ Johanne said quietly, puckering her lips against the child’s warm, soft cheek. ‘It’s the seventeenth of May, national day.’
    ‘I know,’ Kristiane replied, looking straight at her mother for a second before continuing in a flat voice: ‘Constitutionday, when we celebrate independence and freedom. This year we can also celebrate the hundredth anniversary of our separation from Sweden. 1814 and 1905. That is what we’re celebrating.’
    ‘My little sweetheart,’ Johanne whispered and kissed her again. ‘You’re so clever. And now you’ve got to get dressed again. OK?’
    ‘Adam can do that.’
    Kristiane wriggled out of her mother’s arms and dashed, barefooted, across the room to the bathroom. She paused by the television for a moment, and turned it on. The Norwegian national anthem blared out of the loudspeakers. She had turned the volume right up the night before. Johanne grabbed the remote control and turned the noise down. Just as she was moving away to find her younger daughter’s party frock, something caught her attention.
    The scene was familiar enough. A sea of people dressed in all their finery in front of the royal palace. Large and small flags, rows of pensioners on the few seats that had been put out, just under the balcony. A close-up of a Pakistani girl in a Norwegian national costume; she smiled at the camera and waved her flag with great enthusiasm. As the picture swept over all the flags and then focused on the glamorous reporter, something happened. The woman put her hand to her ear. She smiled sheepishly, looked at something that was possibly a script and opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Instead she turned away, as if she didn’t want to be filmed. Two sudden, random and very short clips then followed. A sweep of the treetops just to the east