Hansen’s voice was strangely slurred, and she was caressing every piece of clothing as if it were alive before she put it on the girl. The girl became attentive and took a closer look at the person she had known her entire short life. ‘Why are you crying?’ she asked, surprised. But that made Hansen upset, and she mumbled something about having a cold, that’s why her eyes were red. She hadn’t been crying.

Suddenly the girl realized what day it was, and her round little face broke out in a smile and she started babbling, ‘I’m going on a trip with Daddy, Hansen, you know that, right? Can I say goodbye to Ole? Are Mommy and Daddy up yet?’ But Hansen just shushed her and gently reprimanded her, saying, ‘Don’t wake up Ole; Daddy is up, but Mommy is still asleep.’

Then she led the girl from the dark, warm nursery, where the air was sweet and thick with the sleep of little children.

The girl was wearing her birthday dress, and she wanted to see herself in the mirror. Her nanny lifted her up. ‘There you go; you’re the one who gets to go with Daddy,’ she said. ‘You can bet Ole is upset he’s not going.’ Out of the flat, shiny mirror, two curious, excited eyes stared out at the child’s own, but behind them was an adult’s damp, pale face, and the child suddenly threw her arms around her nanny’s neck. ‘When am I coming back home?’ she asked. There was a sudden touch of anxiousness in her voice. Hansen didn’t answer, but set her carefully back down on the floor and started brushing the girl’s long blonde hair with a slightly trembling hand. A little later she was able to say, ‘It won’t be so very long,’ in a voice that she thought would be reassuring. Then she remembered the mother’s numerous house rules. One of them was: You always have to tell a child the truth. She would rather be skinned alive than tell the truth at that moment. A wave of anger swept through her toward the mother of the child she loved more than any of the children she had ever known before in her life. They share children between them as if they were furniture, she thought, and when she heard the father’s heavy steps upstairs: That poor man; she is destroying his world right now. She forgot about her self-effacing tenderness for the wife when she was sick and the children had to be kept away from her; and when she was healthy and sang during her morning shower, carefree and youthful; and the thing behind all of it. That kind of person, she thought vaguely, but got no further, before sorrow ambushed her again. Her tears dropped soundlessly into the girl’s hair, glowing like a radiant halo around her precious little face.