My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(34)

The wurse doesn’t look as if it was, but she throws her arms around its neck all the same, buries her hands deep in its thick black fur, and exclaims: “Wait, I’ve got something for you!” The wurse greedily sticks its nose into her backpack, but looks remarkably disappointed when it pulls it back out again.

“They’re protein bars,” says Elsa apologetically. “We don’t have any sweets at home because Mum doesn’t want me to eat them, but George says these are mega-tasty!”

The wurse doesn’t like them at all. It only has about nine of them. When the bell goes, Elsa hugs it hard, hard, hard one more time and whispers, “Thanks for coming!”

She knows that the other children in the playground see her do it. The teachers may be able to avoid noticing the biggest, blackest wurse appearing out of nowhere in the morning break, but no child in the entire universe could.

No one leaves any notes in Elsa’s locker that day.





12





MINT


Elsa stands alone on the balcony of Granny’s flat. They used to stand here often. It was here that Granny first pointed at the cloud animals and talked about the Land-of-Almost-Awake, just after Mum and Dad had got divorced. That night Elsa got to see Miamas for the first time. She stares out blindly into the darkness and misses her more than ever. She has been lying on Granny’s bed, looking up at the photos on the ceiling and trying to figure out what Granny was talking about at the hospital when she said Elsa mustn’t hate her. And also, “it’s a grandmother’s privilege never to have to show her grandchild who she was before she became a grandmother.” Elsa has spent hours trying to work out what this treasure hunt is for, or where the next clue can be found. If there even is one.

The wurse sleeps in the storage unit in the cellar. In the midst of all this it’s good to know that the wurse is close at hand. It makes Elsa feel a little bit less lonely.

She peers over the balcony railing. Has a sense of something moving down there on the ground, in the darkness. She can’t see anything, obviously, but she knows The Monster is there. Granny has planned the fairy tale in this way. The Monster is guarding the castle. Guarding Elsa.

She’s just angry with Granny for never explaining what he’s guarding it from.

A voice farther off saws through the silence.

“ . . . Yeah, yeah, I’ve got all the booze for the party, I’m only just getting back home now!” the voice declares irritably as it draws closer.

It’s the woman in the black skirt, talking into the white cord. She’s heaving four heavy plastic bags along, and they knock into each other and then against her shins at every step. The woman swears and fumbles with her keys by the door.

“Oh there’ll be at least twenty of us—and you know how well the guys in the office hold their drink. Not that they had any time to help, mind . . . Yeah, isn’t it? I know! As if I didn’t have a full-time job as well?” is the last thing Elsa hears before the woman marches into the house.

Elsa doesn’t know much at all about the woman in the black skirt, except that everything smells of mint and she always has very well-ironed clothes and always seems to be stressed out. Granny used to say it was “because of her boys.” Elsa doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

Inside, Mum is sitting on a high stool in the kitchen, talking on the telephone and fiddling restlessly with one of Granny’s tea towels. She never seems to have to listen very much to what the person at the other end of the line is saying. No one ever disagrees with Mum. Not that she raises her voice or interrupts; she’s just not the sort of person anyone wants to get on the wrong side of. Mum likes to keep it like this, because conflict is bad for efficiency and efficiency is very important to her. George sometimes jokes that Mum will give birth to Halfie during her lunch break, to avoid any negative effect on the hospital’s general efficiency. Elsa hates George for making all those stupid jokes. Hates him because he thinks he knows Mum well enough to make jokes about her.

Of course, Granny thought efficiency was rubbish, and she couldn’t give a crap about the negative effect of conflict. Elsa heard one of the doctors at Mum’s hospital saying that Granny “could start a fight in an empty room,” but when Elsa told Granny she just looked miffed and said, “What if it was the room that started it?” And then she told the fairy tale about the girl who said no. Even though Elsa had already heard it at least an eternity of times.

“The Girl Who Said No” was one of the first stories Elsa ever heard from the Land-of-Almost-Awake. It was about the Queen of Miaudacas, one of the six kingdoms. In the beginning the queen had been a courageous and fair-minded princess very much liked by all, but unfortunately she grew up and became a frightened adult, as adults tend to be. She started loving efficiency and avoiding conflict. As adults do.

And then the queen simply forbade all conflict in Miaudacas. Everyone had to get along all the time. And because nearly all conflicts start with someone saying “no,” the queen also made this word illegal. Anyone breaking this law was immediately cast into a huge Naysayers’ Prison, and hundreds of soldiers in black armor who were known as Yea-Sayers patrolled the streets to make sure there were no disagreements anywhere. Dissatisfied with this, the queen had soon outlawed not only the word “no” but also other words including “not” and “maybe” and “well.” Any of these were enough to get you sent straight to prison, where you’d never again see the light of day.