Anna sat down again while Nathalie walked up to the counter to order something. She felt in the pockets of her coat, extracted a packet containing two biscuits and placed it on the table.

"Are you hungry?" Seton asked.

"No. She was." Anna took the phone out of her pocket as well and that reminded her to tell Seton something she had not done yet. "Your mother called you. I forgot to say."

"My mother? When?"

"Just after I had called you."

"What did she say?"

"She wanted to know if you were coming home for Christmas."

"I forgot," he sighed. "Now what do I do? What did she say to you?"

"Oh, it was a very short call. We didn't actually say much, but I told her I'd tell you to go."

"How? How can I go? I'd better give her a call to apologise." He looked at his watch. "I hope she's still up." Anna gave him back his own phone and he took it with him to call in private. He wanted to go and he wanted to take Anna. It was not that he did not trust his friends, but he would feel more at ease to have her with him. If she stayed at the summerhouse while he went away, he would be worried constantly, but he could not slight the men by taking Anna only. He assumed that this would not be a problem, knowing how much they always had left over from their Christmas dinners. She always made enough to feed an army. He grimaced. Mothers always did that and not to hurt their feelings, one had to go and eat all of it. He would like to go, but he did not know if it would be safe. Maybe there were people looking out for him in case he should go home.

The Commissioner was now alone with Anna and he studied her face as she stared after Seton walking away. It seemed to him that she was well aware of what the consequences of her preference were, as there was a bit of sadness and reticence in her stare. "I think I've met him before," he said.

Anna's brown eyes focused on his. "Who?"

"Your friend Mr. Seton."

"Where from?" Anna looked alarmed. She hoped their paths had not crossed over a police case which had them on opposite sides of the law. He just could not be a criminal.

"Please do not look so alarmed!" he smiled. "He hasn't done anything wrong. How well do you know him?" He was curious about that. They could not have known each other for very long and yet they were rather familiar with each other.

"Not as well as I should wish," Anna admitted. "Please tell me he is not a notorious criminal," she begged.

"No, I still don't know exactly how we met, but I'm certain that he wasn't a criminal. It has something to do with my daughters, that's all I remember at the moment."

"Your daughters?" Anna exclaimed.

The Commissioner saw that that was only one degree less troubling than his being a criminal. "Oh, not in that way at all! I think I would have remembered that."

Seton returned, pocketing the phone with a frown. He had not told his mother anything about Anna -- he had merely said there would be five of them coming to dinner. She had not asked who Anna was and why she had answered his phone, but he knew he would receive many subtle inquiries tomorrow.

Nathalie returned with her salad and Anna pushed the biscuits towards her.

"Thanks. Have you said anything important in my absence?" Nathalie asked.

The Commissioner shook his head. "No, we had better begin doing that. It's getting late. What are you going to do?" he asked Seton.

"Exercise more pressure. That's all I can do at the moment."

"Will you work on Thalen as well?"

"He's the PM's lapdog," Seton shrugged. "There's not much we can do."

"Yes, there is," said Nathalie. "Why is he the PM's lapdog? Because he wants to climb up. Just convince him -- lure him away from the PM and convince him that following the PM is not the way to glory."

"But he doesn't deserve any glory. And who has got enough power to awe him?"

The men looked at Anna, who looked alarmed. "Not me! I only have ceremonial power. I don't have any personal power."

"No, not her," Nathalie agreed. "But her sister. Her sister has enough personal power and if she lets it slip that Anna will abdicate because of traumatic experiences blah blah blah, it's not very difficult to conclude that Marie-Celeste will be her successor, which will of course make all of them very respectful of her."

"If she lets it slip that Anna will abdicate," Seton repeated. "Will Anna abdicate?"

"Anna shall not make any public statements on that subject at this moment," said Anna with a yawn. "Really, I'm as unreliable as anything at the moment. I don't think it would be wise." She was not yet ready to face other people's reactions, although she saw that Seton would like to know what she was going to do. She would like to know what he was going to do too. But it was not something they could discuss in front of other people just like that. He should know that. Because it was all too obvious if she would take one of her hands away from around her coffee cup, she sufficed with a nudge of her knee under the table, soft enough so he would not take it like a reprimand.

"I'll talk to your sister," Nathalie said. "There's not much else I can do, what with Christmas coming up and no newspaper to make until Sunday."

"Nathalie, I hope you'll only write about what is relevant," Seton said seriously. "I'm sure there are several things that you've seen and heard today that are completely irrelevant to the whole case."

Nathalie knew very well what he was talking about. He had not received the verbal answer he had wanted to hear -- Anna's answer had been a bit blunt, she thought -- but he did not look disappointed for long at all, which made her wonder what sort of communication went on under the table. Anna seemed not to realise that the fact she could not possibly move her chair any closer to his undid the whole effect of innocently having her hands on the table. "Just to play devil's advocate, however, they are not irrelevant to the question of succession and in due course they might very well come to light. You should consider that people might want to know why."

Anna rested her head in her hands. "But not now. Please."

"Just because I'm a journalist does not mean I'm inconsiderate," Nathalie said a little indignantly.

Seton and the Commissioner agreed that they would keep in touch over the weekend and they exchanged numbers. Because Nathalie had not yet finished her salad, Seton and Anna left first. Not long afterwards they were followed by Gris and Hegge, which caused Nathalie to wonder if they also belonged to the group. She had been sitting close to them all the time without suspecting anything. But no, it had to be a coincidence. Pierre could not have associates who would smile so flirtatiously at her when they were doing their job. They ought to keep their minds on the task at hand. Although Pierre did not seem to have done that himself, so maybe his pals would not have to do that either.

"John, sit in the back with me," Anna asked timidly when they were out in the cold again. It was not dark, with all the bright lights outside. "I'm afraid I'll fall asleep and I don't want to be embarrassing and to fall against someone. Or don't you fit in?"

Seton figured that Anna was worth the sacrifice of folding himself up in the back seat in an uncomfortable way. "I'll fit in. It will only be a short while. I'll manage." He did not think she would fall asleep during the short drive, but he was not going to say so. Conscious of having his three friends walking behind him, he did not take her hand. He was not yet comfortable with being demonstrative. "I'm going in the back," he announced when they reached the car.

"I'll go in the front then," said Hegge before Gris could react.

It took a bit of arranging to find a comfortable position in the back seat, but both Seton and Anna were quite pleased with the result, since he was sitting in the middle with his feet near the window and she was sitting near the window with her feet in the middle and her legs draped over his -- a position which offered plenty of opportunities for whispered conversation, especially since Raine had turned on the radio. "So, umm…would you mind that we're all going to my mother's tomorrow?" Seton asked.

"If you think that it's safe, then I shan't mind."

"But will you mind meeting my mother?"

"Will she ask questions? I don't know if I can answer any questions about where this is going." Anna pulled at the zipper of his coat, because the waterproof fabric felt very cold to her face.

"Children," Raine said warningly when he heard the sound. "No undressing in the car, if you please."

Seton ignored him. "I think it's going in a nice direction," he whispered to Anna.

Hegge turned around in his seat and addressed them over his shoulder. "I'm very happy for the two of you and I really don't want to interfere, but I don't know whether you realise that you two are very obviously an item, especially when she sits in your lap in a restaurant. Maybe you thought that the Commissioner and the blonde dish wouldn't notice anything, but they certainly did."

"How do you know that?"

"We stayed a little while after you had left, remember? They certainly commented on the fact that you were having an affair."

Anna sighed and buried her head in Seton's coat. "What did they say?" she asked in a muffled voice. "Scandalous, right?"

"Actually, no. They were very sympathetic."

What if it does not work out and all these people know about it? Anna thought. That would be so embarrassing.

"I hope I didn't say anything wrong?" Hegge asked when it remained suspiciously quiet in their part of the car.

"No, thanks for telling me. I hadn't realised," said Seton. "I was wondering whether you could call it an affair after only a few hours, but I think I got my answer." He stroked Anna's face with a very cold finger.

Anna gave a little shriek. "Argh!" She caught his finger with her hand. "Don't do that! You're cold."

Hegge coughed. "By saying that I didn't mean to give you a permit to cuddle and giggle in my presence. Save that for when you're in bed. At least you don't need the nightmare excuse anymore now."

Anna held Seton's hand to warm it up and kissed his fingers. "I'm very conservative when it comes to love and marriage," she said sweetly. "Keep that in mind when you speculate."

Seton frowned in the dark. He wondered what she meant. Did she mean that she was no longer going to come to him if she had a nightmare? "Isn't that hypocritical?" he whispered doubtfully. "Sleeping in my bed innocently is alright, but now that we are…well, now that we…have something, you want to sleep apart? It's alright with me if you want that, but it doesn't really sound very logical."

Anna squeezed his hand. "I'm only saying that I have some principles. Just a few, mind you. Don't worry."

"What are they?"

"I only need to know one thing and then I can tell you."

"What's that one thing?"

"Do you think you could ever marry me?"

"Isn't it a bit soon to ask me that?" Seton whispered back. He was a bit shocked.

"Yes, but I have no choice. You wanted to know, so I had to ask." Anna let go of his hand.

Hegge heard them whisper and wished he had not said anything, even though he was sure that it was sometimes better to be warned in advance, instead of regretting things later on.

Great. Now she thinks I don't want to marry her. Seton tried to relocate her hand. "How can I say that after three days?"

"I know you can't say that after three days," Anna answered, attempting to pull her hand out of his grasp. "I know that. But it means I can't share a bed with you. What if I don't end up marrying you? A queen can't have that kind of past. I can't mess about and I don't want to mess about --"

"We're home," Raine suddenly announced.

"Stay," Anna ordered Seton. "We'll follow in a minute." She waited until the others had got out before she continued. "You do understand what I mean, don't you?" There was no more need to whisper now.

"Yes." He paused. "I have principles too, Anna. I refuse to marry a queen."

"Oh," she said softly. "Yes, that's what I thought."

"Let's take the rational approach. To simplify the table, I'll just assume that you want to marry me, and that I'm an unscrupulous and unprincipled bugger when it comes to sharing a bed with you. Okay, there we go." He switched the light in the car on and took out his notebook.

Anna kissed his cheek and blushed. "You're not unscrupulous."

His face lit up. "Don't embarrass me and get off my knees. I can't write."

Anna smiled and took up a different position. "I love tables," she said as he drew a table.

"You are very weird."

"That last column is superfluous," Anna remarked. "It's the same as the second column."

"Oh, you're right." Seton raised his eyebrows. "I suppose that is because you will always sleep with your husband."

"Will I?" she teased. "Actually, the third column is superfluous as well. I only have to look at number two."

"But it makes a difference to you whether we are married or not," he said in a puzzled tone.

"Whether we are going to be married or not," Anna corrected. "I know you assumed that I was willing to marry you, just to simplify the table, but…umm…umm, yes…assume all you wish," she finished quickly.

"And what do we do now?" Seton asked quietly.

"Yes…" said Anna. "I see you wasted no time by putting in what was unacceptable to you anyway. Why don't I do the same and cross out what I don't like?" She crossed out four rows.

"You're serious?" Seton asked incredulously, looking at what remained.

"Yes. It seems you don't know me all that well yet, doesn't it?" she smiled.

"Are you sure the two options I left out are not what you'd like best?" he asked, just to be sure. After all, she had just indicated that she would prefer not to be a queen.

She shook her head with a shy smile. "How does it sound to you? Better? Or is a princess just as unappealing as a queen?"

"Unappealing? You could never be unappealing." He liked that shy smile. "If I still love you in a month, I'll marry you, queen or princess."

"I have to warn you that the procedure takes quite long, so that in a month -- especially with Christmas and New Year -- I'll still be a queen. Mmm…oh what do I care?"

"About what?"

"I'm not as conservative as I thought."

"No, you're not as conservative as you thought you ought to be and you realise it's quite alright to take part in a pyjama party," he said with a smile.

Seton briefly woke at eight and felt Anna's hand on his stomach. Life is good, he thought and slept on.

Anna woke at nine, decided it was too early to get up and closed her eyes again, wondering vaguely and incoherently how she came to be lying so close to the middle of the bed. More than an hour later, she opened them again. She was full of energy by now and decided to make breakfast, because Christmas deserved a special kind of breakfast and none of the men would think of that, she was sure. Besides, she wanted to surprise them and she was also a little nervous about not knowing what to say when he woke up. My hair is too long, Anna thought as she felt a painful pull when it did not come with her when she tried to leave the bed, because Seton was lying on a few strands. Carefully she pulled her hair free, trying not to wake him.

It took her a while to locate the necessary ingredients and utensils and half an hour later the sink was full of things she had tried to use, but which turned out not to be so useful after all. While the rolls were in the oven, all she could do was get dressed. Anna ran upstairs and showered and dressed in record time.

Brushing her hair and holding her shoes in her hand, she came down again before the rolls would burn. That had been the only difficult part of the whole breakfast preparations. She had taken care to keep the rest simple. "Wonderful!" She was proud of how the table looked, with even a few small twigs she had cut off the Christmas tree for decorations. "Nuhuh!" she wagged her finger at Gris and Raine when they showed up in their pyjamas. "No pyjamas." And they obediently retraced their steps.

"Wow. Did they do that?" asked Seton when he came in a few seconds later. He had obviously met them on the stairs.

"No, I hired a catering service. They've just left," Anna replied. He looked a bit uncertain and she laughed.

One look at the sink had him laughing as well. "Some catering service! Let me help you clean it up."

"Help me? I wasn't going to clean it up."

"Why not? It's very easy." He threw a tea towel over the sink before approaching her to give her a kiss. "Good morning. How was your night? No bad dreams? Say, what sort of magnet did you install in the middle of your bed?"

"I thought you had done that. Can you cut a bit off my hair? It's a bit too long."

"I'm not a hairdresser and it's a complete waste of that lovely hair."

"It's just a straight line; nothing difficult about that. Just cut about this much off, so you can't lie on it anymore -- about fifteen centimetres." Anna held her fingers about fifteen centimetres apart. "It will still be long. Please? It's very easy and it will grow back on in no time."

"Okay," he sighed. He got some scissors and her hairbrush and cut off seven centimetres.

"No, more," Anna insisted.

"Anna! Don't make me do it."

"Please?"

"Not fifteen. Ten?" Seton negotiated.

"Eleven?"

"Ten and a half?"

"Deal," said Anna, knowing that it would be very difficult to cut off just three centimetres, with all the correcting an inexperienced hairdresser had to do. He would probably end up cutting more than fifteen, which was exactly what she wanted. She had purposely said less than what she actually wanted.

Seton cut on. "Bloody --" he swallowed the rest.

Anna suppressed a smile. "Too much?"

"Yes, I've gone over three and a half on this side and now it's completely asymmetrical. And where does this come from?" he pulled a lock that appeared from somewhere under the rest of her hair and that was much longer. "Why do you trust your hair to me, Anna? I'm ruining it."

"You'll do fine." She knew he would not stop until it looked good.

The others admired both Anna's shorter hair and her breakfast, and she was quite happy until she remembered what was waiting in the outside world. Seton was watching a tennis match while the others did the dishes, having cleared the table and piled the dishes himself, and Anna sat down next to him. "John?"

"Yes?"

"Can you say something reassuring to me?"

"What's bothering you?"

"On the one hand I want this to end and on the other hand I don't, because I like the way we live here. But I also want the whole threat to be removed…"

He took her hand and turned back to the television set to think of something to say. He winced as the player hit the ball into the net.

"Are you listening?" Anna asked in an insecure voice. Maybe he was not interested. Maybe he was more interested in what happened on Eurosport.

"The threat will be removed, willingly or unwillingly."

"By you?"

"If I must. It's not something I'm good at, though, but it's for you. I doubt that the Commissioner will take any steps if I do," he said to put Anna at ease. "We've already talked about it, you see."

"When you sent us away last night?"

"Yes. Sorry. I hope you got along with Nathalie."

"Yes, that went alright."

"I hope she's talked to your sister yet."

Nathalie had called Marie-Celeste already, when the latter was having breakfast with her relatives. Nathalie found her in a belligerent mood, because some cousins had dared to place their own concerns over Anna's. "Do you think it will have some effect if you let on that you will be the next queen? Would they listen to you?" she asked.

"Hmmm," said Marie-Celeste, still busy moving away from the breakfast table. "I think it might. Will I be the next queen? I won't be, unless they murder Anna."

"You could say that she would almost certainly consider the whole thing a traumatic experience. I don't doubt that you could get a few eminent professors to agree with you on that she might be too traumatised to reign."

"Except that she is not, because she wouldn't get a trauma from that fake kidnapping."

"I don't know," said Nathalie. "She didn't know it wasn't real in the beginning, did she? Anyway, the Prime Minister wouldn't know whether she got a trauma or not. He'll just know that he's going to have you to deal with in any case, abdication or death, because you're the next in line."

"Hmmm. You're pretty certain that she won't stay on."

"If I were her, I'd quit. Also, you might be pleased to hear that the Commissioner is on our side. That means that the largest party has stopped hunting. Second thing, apparently there is at least foreign secret service sticking its nose into things that don't concern them. I don't know if you could warn off any heads of state that you know personally or that you think might be inclined to interfere. Anna said she doubted that they would listen to her, but --"

"Anna said?" Marie-Celeste interrupted. "You spoke to her since yesterday?"

"It was very late last night. Pierre -- sorry, his name is not Pierre, I discovered, but I'm too used to calling him that -- called me when I was with the Commissioner and he set up a meeting last night. He brought Anna."

"He brought Anna?"

Nathalie thought she had better not tell Marie-Celeste how they had been sitting. "Anna thinks the Prime Minister invented the whole idea to strengthen his position and to become more popular himself. There was very little risk attached to the scheme, because he controlled it completely. She had a little diagram -- what is it with your sister and diagrams? -- that showed us how."

"I must let all of this sink in before I take action," Marie-Celeste decided. "I will call him today, though, because he'll probably be very annoyed at being called at Christmas. I'll think of something to say. It might take a while, because I must think it through carefully. I'll also gauge a few acquaintances who happen to be heads of state. I can think of a few who might have felt like interfering. I'll tell them we have everything under control and that there is no need for their assistance and ask them to move out. Nicely."

"Have you ever heard of a man called Seton?" the Commissioner asked his two daughters over breakfast.

"In connection to what?" Isabelle, his eldest, asked. She was twenty-four.

"I don't know. Anything."

"Oh, nice and vague!" cried the youngest, Karine of twenty-two. "Why?"

"I could swear that I heard of him before yesterday and it had something to do with the two of you."

"With us? What does he do? How old is he?"

"Thirty? Thirty-two? Good-looking. And I don't know what he does. That's what I was wondering."

Isabelle looked at Karine and they both frowned and shrugged. "Sorry, Dad. We can't remember. I know we remember most good-looking guys, but you and I don't have the same taste, you know, he might be totally hideous! He's a bit too old to have been at school or at university with us if he's over thirty. Did you meet this guy or something?"

"Yes, and his name sounded familiar."

"Wait," said Karine after breakfast when she was pressing buttons on the remote control, trying to find something to watch. "Dad, I know of at least one person with that name! But that was ages ago. We haven't heard anything about him for ages. It might not at all be the one you are referring to. I suppose there could be more of them around."

Anna was not really a good judge of houses and consequently she could not infer the Setons' social status from the kind of house and neighbourhood they lived in. She liked the look of it, however. On Seton's instructions, Raine drove the car all the way past the house and parked it up the drive as far as possible. Not many people would be able to see them get out of it now, perhaps only the neighbours.

A graying woman of perhaps sixty came out of the back door and embraced Seton. She shook their hands and bade them welcome.

Anna only introduced herself as Anna, without a surname, and she hoped that would be all right. Thinking about surnames, she wondered how Seton had ended up with one that did not quite match his native language. Or at least the language he spoke as if it were his mother tongue, which it probably was, she thought, hearing him and his mother talk. If so, then it must be his father who had donated the foreign name. Perhaps he was even bilingual, too. Being multilingual herself and having studied this particular topic a lot at university, she was always interested in it and she looked around for signs of anything -- books in English or another language. Bookcases were always mines of information. Of course it would not do to ask outright, not after having been in the house for only a few seconds. Hello, I'm Anna and may I know whether you are bilingual? And which language do you use in your family?

"Sit down," Seton's mother waved. "James is coming later on, but Patrick is already here."

There were already two men sitting in the room. "My father," Seton explained. "And my brother Patrick."

Anna looked for a family resemblance between Seton and his brother, but that was more difficult to find than the resemblance between him and his father. She wondered why she was mentally still referring to him by his last name, when they were undoubtedly on first-name basis now.

"And that's Thomas, Thomas, Anna and Thomas."

"It's a very popular name," said Seton senior in a dry tone with a heavy accent, which Anna immediately identified as English. So this is where he got his last name. All the Setons seemed to find this very funny, but the humour eluded their guests. She was glad that nobody recognised her, but her shorter hair and the fact that nobody had any reason to suspect it was her, saved her from being found out.

Patrick seemed to know the three Thomases through his brother and everyone started talking at once. Anna saw that Mrs. Seton looked very pleased to have John with her and she wondered if he could tell her what he was doing. Her mind drifted back to bilingualism when she discovered that half the room was speaking English. She was wedged between Raine and Hegge and she did not have to say anything until Hegge addressed her. "What are you thinking of, Anna?"

"I was wondering why the opposite of monolingual monogamy is multilingual polygamy."

"Interesting," said Hegge, to whom such thoughts were a waste of time.

"That's because of Zeus," John declared. "He was polygamous but not a polyglot. He left languages to the Romans."

"What about Jupiter then?" Anna asked seriously.

He grinned. "That illustrates my point that the Romans were polyglots. They came up with Jupiter next to Zeus and not the Greek."

"Go away, you ignoramus," said his mother. "What do you remember of your education? I'm very glad you came, but you should not corrupt a potentially interesting discussion."

"Oh, but I had a very interesting point, I thought," he said.

"Interesting, perhaps, but hardly sound."

"Do you know the opposite of the contradiction in terms monopoly? It's polo money. And the other contradiction in terms, monarchy? Whoever coined those words was obviously multilingual, unless he was monolingual and the prefixes became multilingual later on."

"Are you multilingual?" Anna asked. "Simultaneously or successively acquired? Did your parents use the one person-one language strategy?" She asked, tossing in a few long words because he did the same. She marvelled at how cheerful he was. He had been smiling continuously since he had been home.

He looked startled at her questions, but before he could answer, his mother replied. "One person-one language was what everyone around us advised us, so we used that. It worked alright, although he did have a few problems when we moved to another country. Do you know anything about the subject?" she asked, glad to see a person with some knowledge of her field of expertise. "My boys are only interested in sports," she apologised for her enthusiasm.

John was pleased to hear that they could converse on at least one subject. He moved away and left them to it.

Anna had spent ten years at university studying languages. She knew this was rather much and perhaps she should not tell his mother that, because it might raise questions, although after a few minutes she realised that his mother would not think it odd at all, having worked there herself. They had quite an interesting talk, because his mother was a linguist as well. Anna was a little amazed at herself because she spoke so much, but it made a difference to her if she liked the subject and if the other person was easy to talk to.

Mrs. Seton assumed that this was the Anna who had answered John's phone and she was curious what the relationships in the group were. Were they all colleagues, or merely friends? One woman and four men were an uncommon group of friends and she wondered if Anna was a friend, also because Patrick knew the men and not Anna. She did not come across as somebody who had merely come along with her boyfriend and neither did anyone take enough notice of her for that. Except John, but that might be because this was his family they were visiting. However, would he let just anyone have his phone?

She approved of the girl at first sight. He could not do much better, because Anna was a nice-looking, well-mannered and well-dressed girl. And very bright, she concluded during their talk. She had always instructed her boys not to waste any time on nitwits, because they were high above such a level.

The only remarkable thing about the girl was that she was surprisingly ignorant of the names of some of the most basic kitchen utensils, which she discovered after their talk when she had to prepare some refreshments and Anna accompanied her into the kitchen, not wanting to stay behind alone since all the men had left the house to do something outside.

Anna's eyes fell on a tennis calendar on the kitchen wall. Surprisingly enough, it was for 1986. 1986? For a moment she wondered if in 1999 and 1986 all dates fell on the same days of the week, but this was too much mental arithmetic and the month displayed was not December but January. Perhaps Mrs. Seton had liked the picture for January for itself, although that did not seem very likely, given the nature of the picture and her age and respectability. It was a very interesting one, that had to be said -- a tennis player sitting on a chair with his legs stretched out and wiping his face with the bottom of his shirt, displaying a tanned and muscular abdomen. Anna! Don't look. You're taken; don't look at other men, Anna thought guiltily. Mine looks just as fine. No, he looks better. This one has bizarre hair. She could not see his face, but she did see that his hair stood up in long spikes. What a ridiculous hairstyle. I'm sure that cost him a pot of gel a day.

"Do you like it?" Mrs. Seton asked.

"Oh…yes, I do…I'm just surprised to see a male pin-up on the wall when you only have sons." Anna wondered if she had said something offensive when the older woman looked at her funnily.

"A…male…pin…up?"

"Isn't he the male equivalent of women in bikinis?"

Mrs. Seton frowned and studied the picture more closely. "I've never looked at it that way. I always thought it was a funny picture, but now I see what you mean."

"Oh…I thought that was why it was hanging here. It's from 1986, so I thought you kept it as a pin-up."

"It's my son."

Seton coming in through the back door was a trifle surprised to find his mother in stitches and Anna gaping at the picture and then her eyes popping out of her head when she saw he was holding a tennis racket. He could see she made the connection between the two things from the way her eyes travelled back and forth in amazement. "Yes, I play tennis," he said calmly.

"Your hair!" she exclaimed.

"It was 1986," he grinned. "I was still young."

"I must sit down." Anna sat down on a chair. "Your hair!"

"Oh oh oh!" his mother clutched her stomach and wiped her eyes. "I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks you looked like an idiot."

"Do you mean you didn't recognise me?" he asked.

"How on earth should I know you played tennis?"

His expression changed. "Oh well, I've been playing very badly for the last few years. I didn't see the point of telling you."

From his face and the way he quickly walked on, Anna could see that it was a sore point, although he had spoken very lightly.

Anna watched in amazement as he held a glass under the tap and filled it five times before his thirst was satisfied. "And I let you cut my hair," she shook her head.

"What did you let him do?" asked Mrs. Seton, in an even more amazed tone.

"I cut her hair," he replied in between taking gulps of water. "Maybe you could check if I cut straight? Got to go again." He was out of the back door in a flash.

"Something very curious is going on," said his mother. Something was indeed going on between John and Anna; she was sure of it, and if nothing was going on yet, then something would certainly be going on in future, given that fond look he had given her. "Cutting your hair! Shall I see if he cut a straight line?"

"It looked alright in the mirror."

"Nevertheless, I don't trust him."

"He didn't trust himself either."

Mrs. Seton did not trust Anna's indulgent smile. It looked as if Anna would even have forgiven him for completely butchering her hair. She was curious to find out more. How long they had known each other, for example. She had never heard John hint at anything and the last time she had spoken to him he must still have been uninterested. "Come upstairs and I'll see what he made of it."

She took Anna upstairs and combed her hair in front of the mirror, smoothing it down with a little water. "It is not that bad, actually," she said after examining it. "He seems to have cut remarkably straight. How long was it?" It was now shoulder length.

Anna indicated it. "It came down to here. Far too long. John didn't want to cut it, but he wouldn't know that it's not really practical."

"How did you wear it then? Loose?"

She pulled it back with her hand and tried to make a bun. "Usually like this." She realised that this was a wrong move when Mrs. Seton's eyes widened in recognition when she saw Anna in the mirror.

"But you are…"

Anna quickly dropped her hair as if that would undo the recognition. "I never said I wasn't Anna…"

The other woman studied her carefully. "What is going on?"

Anna was grateful that Seton's mother had taken the news so well. She had had to tell her the whole story, being incapable of lying, but now she had to tell him about it. She followed him when the men came back into the house after having spent a considerable time outside. Since he carried a tennis racket and his brother did too, she assumed they had been playing. Of course he would have to go and change, because he was now wearing something different. She was not sure if he had seen her follow him, until she joined him in what was obviously his room.

"Do you want me to explain?" he asked, sitting down on the bed.

Anna shook her head. "Explain what? No. I came to tell you something." She bit her lip and glanced around the room. He must have grown up in here, but all the boyish stuff was gone and most of his favourite things had been taken to his own house, presumably. What caught the eye immediately were trophies, a lot of trophies. She was impressed, even if some had carelessly been put into boxes under the bed and others were functioning as bookends, or stood on shelves with baseball hats on them.

"You don't love me anymore?"

"No! I mean, no, that's not it."

Seton got up and pulled her close. "Then it can't be bad."

"Yes, it can. I told your mother everything. She recognised me when she did my hair," Anna winced. "I'm sorry."

He kissed her forehead and rubbed her back. "Don't be sorry! I'm glad the task fell to you. Do you have any idea how worried I was about telling her? What did she say?"

"She kept saying that it was unlike you to -- to fall --"

He smiled and gave her a kiss. "Of course it's unlike me, but that's because I had never met you before."

"But you had seen me."

"Never in person. I have to say you are absolutely more delectable in person than on a picture."

"Hmm," said Anna, thinking of the calendar. "I don't know about you, though. I'm sure you look well both ways, but how did you end up on a sexy calendar?"

"Sexy calendar?" he raised his eyebrows. "Do you mean that thing in the kitchen? None of the pictures on that calendar are at all sexy." Most were of people in strange positions after they had fallen, or of people pulling strange faces.

"Well, I don't know, but you did have your shirt pulled up like that to show off your muscles," Anna said doubtfully.

"And that's sexy?" he asked, equally doubtful. "Gosh, Anna! If you like a picture as much as that, then what do you think of the real thing?" He pulled his shirt from his trousers.

"John, don't do that!" Anna said in shock. "We're in your parents' house!"

Marie-Celeste had announced that she would take over Anna's Christmas speech. "I think that now especially it is necessary to uphold the tradition," she had said and everything had been arranged so that she could take over. Of course she could not sit on a throne while reading it, but it would be broadcast nevertheless. Since Anna had already written out her speech, all she had to do was adapt and embellish it, add certain passages about power abuse and betrayal, and add some positive things about her sister.

James, the third son, had arrived too and he was watching the TV closely when a picture of Anna was shown. "Has the Queen been released by the kidnappers or something? Did I miss that? She looks an amazing lot like that girl who's having a lover-to-lover chat with our John in his bedroom. I didn't disturb them, but they had the door wide open so I couldn't help noticing them when I went upstairs."

"Well…" said his mother. "She has been telling me a few things…"

"What, that she was the Queen?" James laughed.

"Yes."

"Oh, right. And she would be snogging my big brother who is as unglamorous as anything. What a joke." But he no longer found it such a big joke when his mother explained a few things.

T's other units still had not made any progress towards finding Unit 6 and he was becoming nervous. What if they could never be found? What if Malling came across a newspaper on his beach island? Originally the case would have been closed long before the news would reach Malling and he could return to the country. But now… Now he could hear about it, return and find out what had happened to his units. "Have you heard from the kidnappers?" he asked the PM. It was Christmas, but the job went on even during the holidays and so did the meetings of the PM's secret committee.

"Nothing new. They still want me to resign, I suppose." He looked around himself at his fellow conspirators. "Can we turn anything back? No, we can't."

He did not say that he had heard from Princess Marie-Celeste, who had told him that the case would either end with her sister's death or it would end with her sister being severely traumatised, and in either case she would succeed to the throne and dismiss him, if he had not already done so himself. He did not take Marie-Celeste very seriously. He saw it as an idle threat, nothing more.

"I take it you all know…?" Anna asked when she saw everybody stare at her when she returned, even one young man she did not know and who must be John's other brother James. When they all nodded, she rounded her lips. "Oh."

"Did you have a nice chat?" James asked curiously.

Since they had not really been talking and it was hard to remember the few things they had said, Anna smiled sweetly. "No comment."

Marie-Celeste knew the PM had not been impressed. After all, he was not really convinced that women half his age would dare to stand up to him, or even have the intelligence to pose more than an idle threat. If he remained unimpressed, then they would have to do something else. Perhaps Anna could return and dismiss him herself. That would teach him. Perhaps it was not such a bad idea to have Anna return and covertly remove the rotten elements, a task in which Marie-Celeste would assist her, naturally. It also limited the scandal if Anna should return as if she had been miraculously released. The less time this all took, the smaller the scandal. Nobody would question her dismissing the PM -- after all, he had not been able to get her back and queens especially had the right to be huffed about such a thing.

"Cel, are you doing something about Anna?" her grandmother asked.

"I'm working on it."

"Don't tell me you're as heartless as your mother." It was a public secret that grandmother and mother did not always get along, and her grandmother feared Marie-Celeste's calm tone.

"Gran, I'm working on it. Don't worry. Anna will be back."

"I'm so worried about her. She can't stand being locked up in small spaces. I hope they didn't lock her up in a closet -- she's slightly claustrophobic."

"She'll be back, Gran. I promise." It pained Marie-Celeste that she could not say anything to reassure her grandmother, who was obviously very worried. If only she could persuade Anna to return.

"Cel, you'd better prepare yourself for a take-over. You do realise that this might just be the small push your sister needed. She was too proud to give up without a valid reason and she never considered disliking attention a strong enough reason. She's a great girl, but it doesn't do any justice to her qualities. I told your father so often, but he was stubborn and he wouldn't listen to me. He's dead now and he'll never know if you take over."

"I'm not a vulture."

"You'll be doing her a favour. Poor Anna! Can you imagine how she'll hate returning? All the attention might even make her prefer to stay away and with every passing the day the attention will increase."

Marie-Celeste closed her eyes and sighed. "But Grandma…what if she does something stupid like run off with a -- with one of her rescuers?"

"Anna?" her grandmother asked disbelievingly. "I doubt that Anna would be that foolish."

"It's possible."

"Why do you think so? She's never shown herself to be prone to amorous misalliances before. She's always been discreet."

"What do you mean, Gran? I didn't know there even was anyone who wasn't a literary character to be discreet about."

"Well, that proves how discreet she was, if even you never noticed whom she liked."

"Hi, I'm calling from Anna's phone," Seton said to Marie-Celeste as he walked around Anna's summerhouse. They had had a nice dinner, but they had not stayed at his parents' house too long. "She's not with me at the moment, but if you want to talk to her, I'll tell her to call you back."

That's very generous of you. Is she all right?

"Yes. I called to ask if you had any news."

The Prime Minister is not impressed, Marie-Celeste said in resignation. That's why I thought Anna should return to dismiss him.

He swallowed. He would not like to part from Anna. "Are you sure?"

"Well, I am sorry about that," he said sharply. "Isn't she being terribly inconsiderate?"

You misunderstand me.

Seton did not want to begin a discussion about that. She had a point. Nothing was happening. Anna had to return sooner or later. It was inevitable. He continued. "Once returned means returned forever. We can't kidnap her back. If she's out of our hands, we can't protect her anymore. Do you realise that? It had better go right. You can't make any mistakes."

They won't harm her. They wouldn't dare, said Marie-Celeste.

"Don't be too sure. Think of what they planned in the first place and that they might have become desperate. Can you guarantee her safety?"

Can you? And I thought you'd be glad to delegate trouble.

The problem was that she was probably just as safe at the Palace as she was with him. He was not very safe either, although in his opinion his mother had been too worried about him. She had ordered him to get another job. "Talk to Anna about it," he said abruptly. "I can't decide for her."

"Call your sister," he said to Anna. "She has a plan."

Anna lightly touched his hand with her fingertips. She could guess what sort of plan Celeste would have and that it would involve a separation -- a temporary separation as far as she was concerned, although she dared not presume to know his thoughts -- but since she was playing Double Patience with Gris, she did not want to say anything out loud. She took the phone. "Take over for me."

In the hall she spoke to her sister. She decided not to be stupid. It was undoubtedly more agreeable to stay here, but it was not going to accomplish anything in the long run. She would only have to suffer for a little while, if she suffered at all. It would be a good test to see if she missed him. She loved him now, but how much of that was infatuation and gratitude? Would it last? She realised that John was not too certain of it either. He was afraid to let her go because he thought she would be gone forever. Anna shook her head. He needed not worry.

Perhaps she should not worry and think so much. Perhaps she should just let go and enjoy, and then suddenly be confronted with reality. And become devastated. No, thanks.

And she had said she would come home. A tear trickled down her face. How absurd to be crying over going home. She ought to be happy, but courage failed her already when she thought of what she would have to face. All the attention she would receive.

But she had to do it. Could she not handle this with dignity? What should she care what all those people thought of her? If there was one person who loved her and several others who liked her, then she could not be that bad. She should make an effort to do it and then she would feel good about doing something on her own. She was not some silly girl who was besotted with someone and foolishly followed him around. No, she had reasons of her own. It was also for her own good.

John listened to her flatly spoken explanation without flinching. It was a bit unnerving -- as if he did not care. He did not kiss her; he did not even touch her. He just sat there gazing at her. Anna felt the tears return. "Say something," she begged after a few minutes.

He shook his head and wiped the tears from her face. "What can I say? You have to go."

"But do you approve?"

"I approve of everything that's in your best interest."

"That's no answer," said Anna. "You do see that I have to? It's very bad for me if other people always help me out. If you never have to do anything, you end up unable to do anything and it makes you feel very useless. Do you approve?"

"Do you need my approval? If I say no, would you change your mind?"

"No," she said firmly. "I'm sorry if I'm going to say something you won't like, but I believe --" she stopped when he smiled. "I don't know if I want you to be happy because I'm leaving," she said uncertainly.

"I'm not happy."

"But you're smiling."

"Should I cry? Do you think I won't miss you?" He was not smiling because she was leaving. He was only feeling proud of her.

"I don't know." Anna hugged him. "I don't know."

"I will. Do you think I'm not afraid that when you're home you'll think you've been misbehaving and that you'll stay there -- that they'll persuade you?"

"I've tried that approach," she said shakily. "It didn't work. At least not from here. We'll just have to wait and see what happens. And you'll call me, won't you?"

Anna woke and wished she had not woken. They had agreed that she would return in the morning -- the sooner the better -- but now that the moment came nearer, she became more and more reluctant to go. It had been decided that Nathalie would take her to the Commissioner, who would personally deliver her to the Palace.

As she crawled closer to Seton and snuggled up to him as a sort of goodbye, she realised he was very much awake, but trying not to be. It made her smile that they felt the same. He refused to admit that he was awake, though, and Anna tickled him in several places to get him to respond.

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