My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(17)

Or used to. They used to row about it.

There’s only one word in the whole letter that Elsa can read. Just one, which has been written in normal letters, tossed down almost haphazardly in the middle of the text. It’s so anonymous that Elsa didn’t notice it the first time she read it. She reads it again and again until she can’t see it through all her blinking. She feels let down and angry for tens of thousands of reasons and probably another ten thousand she hasn’t even thought of yet. Because she knows it’s not a coincidence. Granny put that word right there so Elsa would see it.

The name on the envelope is the same name as the one on The Monster’s mailbox. And the only word Elsa can read in the letter is “Miamas.”

Granny has always loved treasure hunts.





6





CLEANING AGENTS


She has three scratch marks on her cheek. As if from claws. She knows they’ll want to know how it all began. Elsa ran, is the short answer. She’s good at running. That’s what happens when you get chased all the time.

This morning she lied to Mum about starting school an hour earlier than usual. And when Mum pulled her up on it, Elsa played the bad mother card. The bad mother card is like Renault: hardly a beauty but surprisingly effective. “I’ve told you like a hundred times I start earlier on Mondays! I even gave you a slip but you never listen to me anymore!”

Mum mumbled something about “pregnant airhead” and looked guilty. The easiest way of getting her off balance is if you can manage to convince her she’s lost control. There used to be just two people in the world who knew how to make Mum lose control. And now there’s only one. That’s a lot of power to put into the hands of someone who’s not even eight yet.

At lunchtime, Elsa took the bus home, because she figured she had a better chance of dodging Britt-Marie during the day. She stopped and bought four bags of Daim in the supermarket. The house was as dark and silent as only Granny’s house could be without the presence of Granny, and it felt as if even the house were missing her. Elsa hid carefully from Britt-Marie, who was on her way to the space where the trash bins are kept, although she didn’t even have any bags of separated rubbish. After Britt-Marie had checked the contents of all the bins and pursed her mouth the way she does when she decides to raise some issue at the next residents’ meeting, she set off down the street to the supermarket so she could walk about and purse her mouth in there for a while. Elsa sneaked in and went up the stairs to the mezzanine floor. There she stood, shaking with fear and anger outside the flat, still with the letter in her hand. Her anger was reserved for Granny. Her fear was of The Monster.



Not long after, she was running through the playground so fast she thought her feet were on fire. And now she sits in a small room with luminous red marks on her cheek as if from claws, waiting for Mum and fully aware that she’ll demand to know what’s happened.

She spins the globe at one end of the desk. The headmaster looks particularly vexed when she does it. So she keeps doing it.

“Well?” the headmaster asks, pointing at her cheek, “Are you ready to tell me what happened?”

She doesn’t even grace him with an answer.

It was smart of Granny, Elsa has to admit it. She’s still insanely irritated about this stupid treasure hunt, but it was smart of Granny to write “Miamas” in normal characters in the letter. Because Elsa had stood there earlier on the landing, summoning her courage for at least a hundred eternities before she rang the doorbell. And if Granny hadn’t known that Elsa would read the letter even though one mustn’t read other people’s letters, and if she hadn’t written “Miamas” in normal characters, Elsa would just have thrown the envelope in The Monster’s mail slot and run away. Instead, she stood there ringing the doorbell, because she had to press The Monster for some answers.

Because Miamas belongs to Granny and Elsa. It’s only theirs. Elsa’s fury at the thought of Granny bringing along some random muppet was bigger than any fear she might have of monsters.

Okay, not much bigger than her monster fear, but big enough.

Our Friend was still howling in the flat next door, but nothing happened when she rang at The Monster’s door. She rang again and banged on the door until the wood was creaking and then peered inside through the mail slot, but it was too dark to see anything. Not a movement. Not a breath. All she could feel was an acrid smell of cleaning agents, the sort of smell that rushes up your nasal membranes and starts kicking the back of your eyeballs when you breathe it in.

But no sign of a monster. Not even a little one.

Elsa took off her backpack and got out the four bags of Daim and emptied them through Our Friend’s mail slot. For a few brief, brief moments the creature stopped howling in there. Elsa has decided to call it “the creature” until she has figured out what it really is, because, irrespective of what Britt-Marie says, Elsa is pretty damn sure that this is no mere dog.

“You have to stop howling; Britt-Marie will call the police and they’ll come here and kill you,” she whispered through the slot.

She didn’t know if the creature understood. But at least it was being quiet and eating its Daim. As any rational creature does, when offered Daim.

“If you see The Monster, tell him I have mail for him,” said Elsa.