Soon after my seventh birthday, my parents took me as usual to spend Christmas with my grandmother in Norway. And it was over there, while my father and mother and I were driving in icy weather just north of Oslo, that our car skidded off the road and went tumbling down into a rocky ravine. My parents were killed. I was firmly strapped into the back seat and received only a cut on the forehead. I won't go into the horrors of that terrible afternoon. I still get the shivers when I think about it. I finished up, of course, back in my grandmother's house with her arms around me tight and both of us crying the whole night long. "What are we going to do now?" I asked her through the tears. "You will stay here with me," she said, "and I will look after you." "Aren't I going back to England?" "No," she said. "I could never do that. Heaven shall take my soul, but Norway shall keep my bones." The very next day, ...