Dad looks dubious. And slightly nonplussed. Elsa blinks away her sleep and remembers that Mum is at a meeting at the hospital, because she tried to wake Elsa up before she left, but she pretended to be asleep. And George is in the kitchen, because he came in a bit earlier to ask if she wanted any eggs, but she pretended to be asleep. So she looks at her father with confusion.
“It’s not your day for you to be with me, is it?”
Dad clears his throat. Looks like dads do when it suddenly dawns on them that something they used to do because it was important to their daughters has now become one of those things their daughters do because it’s important to their dads. It’s a very thin line to cross. Neither dads nor their daughters ever forget when they do cross it.
Elsa counts the days in her head, instantly remembers, and instantly apologizes. She was right, it isn’t Dad’s day. But she was wrong, because today’s the day before Christmas Eve, which is a terrible thing to forget. Because the day before Christmas Eve is her and Dad’s day. Christmas-tree day.
As the name subtly suggests, this is the day that Elsa and Dad buy their Christmas tree. A plastic one, obviously, because Elsa refuses to buy a real tree. But because Dad enjoys the annual tradition so much, Elsa insists on buying a new plastic tree every year. Some people find it a bit of an odd tradition, but Granny used to say that “every child of divorce has the right to get a bit bloody eccentric now and then.”
Mum, of course, was very angry at Granny about the whole plastic tree thing, because she likes the smell of a real spruce tree and always said that the plastic tree was something Granny had duped Elsa about. Because it was Granny who had told Elsa about the Christmas tree dance in Miamas, and no one who’s heard that story wants to have a spruce tree that someone has amputated and sold into slavery. In Miamas, spruce trees are living, thinking creatures with—considering that they’re coniferous trees—an unaccountably strong interest in home design.
They don’t live in the forest but in the southern districts of Miamas, which have become quite trendy in recent years, and they often work in the advertising industry and wear scarves indoors. And once every year, soon after the first snow has fallen, all the spruce trees gather in the big square below the castle and compete for the right to stay in someone’s house over Christmas. The spruce trees choose the houses, not the other way round, and the choice is decided by a dance competition. In the olden days they used to have duels about it, but spruce trees are generally such bad shots that it used to take forever. So now they do spruce dancing, which looks a bit unusual, because spruce trees don’t have feet. And if a non–spruce tree wants to imitate a dancing spruce tree, they just jump up and down. It’s quite handy, particularly on a crowded dance floor.
Elsa knows that because when Dad drinks a glass and a half of champagne on New Year’s Eve, he sometimes does the spruce dance in the kitchen with Lisette. But for Dad it’s just known as “dancing.”
“Sorry, Dad, I do know what day it is!” Elsa yells, hopping into her jeans, getting into her sweater and jacket, and running into the hall. “I just have to do one thing first!”
Elsa hid the wurse in Renault last night. She brought it down a bucket of cinnamon buns from Maud and told it to hide under the blankets in the backseat if anyone came down into the garage. “You have to pretend you’re a pile of clothes or a TV or something!” suggested Elsa, though the wurse didn’t look entirely convinced. So Elsa had to go and get a sack of dreams from Maud, after which the wurse gave in and crept under the blankets. It didn’t look much like a TV, though.