My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(103)

“I know, Mum. I know.”

Mum blinks awkwardly at her.

“What? You know? How do you know?”

Elsa sighs patiently.

“I mean, yeah, okay, it took me a bit of time to figure it out. But it wasn’t exactly, like, quantum physics. First of all, not even Granny would have been so irresponsible as to send me out on a treasure hunt without telling you first. And secondly, only you and I can drive Renault, because he’s a bit different, but I drove him sometimes when Granny was eating kebab and you drove him sometimes when Granny was drunk. So it must have been one of us who parked him in the garage in Britt-Marie’s space. And it wasn’t me. And I’m sort of not an idiot. I can count.”

Mum laughs so loudly and for so long about it that Elsa starts getting seriously worried about the hummingbird.

“You’re the sharpest person I know, do you know that?”

And she thinks, Well, that’s nice and all that, but Mum really needs to get out there and meet a few more people.

“What did Granny write in your letter?” asks Elsa.

Mum’s lips come together.

“She wrote sorry.”

“For being a bad mother?”

“Yes.”

“Have you forgiven her?”

Mum smiles and Elsa wipes her cheeks again with the Gryffindor scarf.

“I’m trying to forgive us both, I think. I’m like Renault. I have a long braking distance,” whispers Mum.

Elsa hugs her until the hummingbird gives up and just goes off to do something else.

“Your grandmother saved children because she was saved herself when she was small, darling. I never knew that, but she wrote it in the letter. She was an orphan,” whispers Mum.

“Like the X-Men.” Elsa nods.

“You know whereabouts the next letter is hidden, I take it?” says Mum with a smile.

“It’s enough to say ‘where,’?” says Elsa, because she can’t stop herself.

But she does know, of course she knows. She’s known all along. She’s not stupid. And this isn’t exactly the most unpredictable of fairy tales.

Mum laughs again. Laughs until the evil nurse comes stamping in and says there’s got to be an end to this now, or she’ll have problems with the tubes.

Elsa stands up. Mum takes her hand and kisses it.

“We’ve decided what Halfie’s going to be called. It’s not going to be Elvir. It’ll be another name. George and I decided as soon as we saw him. I think you’re going to like it.”

She’s right about that. Elsa likes it. She likes it a lot.

A few moments later she’s standing in a little room, looking at him through a pane of glass. He’s lying inside a little plastic box. Or a very big lunchbox. It’s hard to tell which. He’s got tubes everywhere and his lips are blue and his face looks as if he is running against an insanely strong wind, but all the nurses tell Elsa it’s not dangerous. She doesn’t like it. This is the most obvious way of figuring out that it actually is dangerous.

She cups her hands against the glass when she whispers, so he’ll be able to hear on the other side. “Don’t be afraid, Halfie. You’ve got a sister now. And it’s going to get better. Everything’s going to be fine.”

And then she switches to the secret language:

“I’ll try not to be jealous of you. I’ve been jealous of you for an insane length of time, but I have a pal whose name is Alf and he and his little brother have been at loggerheads for like a hundred years. I don’t want us to be at loggerheads for a hundred years. So I think we have to start working at liking each other right from the start, you get what I mean?”

Halfie looks like he gets it. Elsa puts her forehead against the glass.

“You have a granny as well. She’s a superhero. I’ll tell you all about her when we get home. Unfortunately I gave the moo-gun to the boy downstairs but I’ll make you another one. And I’ll bring you to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and we’ll eat dreams and dance and laugh and cry and be brave and forgive people, and we’ll fly with the cloud animals and Granny will be sitting on a bench in Miamas, smoking and waiting for us. And one day my granddad will come wandering along as well. We’ll hear him from far away because he laughs with his whole body. He laughs so much that I think we’ll have to build an eighth kingdom for him. I’ll ask Wolfheart what ‘I laugh’ is in his mother’s language. And the wurse is also there in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. You’re going to like the wurse. There’s no better friend than a wurse!”

Halfie looks at her from the plastic box. Elsa wipes the glass with the Gryffindor scarf.

“You’ve got a good name. The best name. I’ll tell you all about the boy you got it from. You’ll like him.”

She stays by the glass until she realizes that the whole hummingbird thing was probably basically a bad idea, in spite of all. She’ll stick to eternities and the eternities of fairy tales for a bit longer. Just for the sake of simplicity. And maybe because it reminds her of Granny.

Before she goes she whispers through cupped hands to Halfie, in the secret language:

“It’s going to be the greatest adventure ever having you as a brother, Harry. The greatest, greatest adventure!”

Things are turning out as Granny said. Things are getting better. Everything is going to be fine.