My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(56)

She looks crestfallen.

“I can throw it in the machine, come along, Kent. There are freshly ironed shirts in your wardrobe. You really can’t be wearing a wrinkly shirt when the accountant comes, Kent, what will the accountant think of us then? Will he think we can’t iron our shirts?” She laughs nervously.

Mum opens her mouth to try to say something again, but Kent catches sight of George.

“Ah! You’ve got eggs?” Kent bursts out enthusiastically.

George nods with satisfaction. Kent immediately darts past Mum into the flat. Britt-Marie hurries after him with a frown. When she passes Mum, Britt-Marie looks bothered as she lets slip, “Oh well, when one is busy with a career like you are, Ulrika, there’s no time to clean, of course not.” Even though every inch of the flat is in perfect order.

Mum ties the sash of her dressing gown round her a little tighter, and says, with a deeply controlled sigh, “Just come on in, all of you. Make yourselves at home.”

Elsa dives into her room and changes out of her pajamas into jeans as quick as she can, so she can run down and check on the wurse in the cellar while everyone is busy up here. Kent interrogates Mum in the kitchen about the accountant, and Britt-Marie echoes him with an “mmm” after every other word.

The only one who stays in the front hall is Alf. Elsa sticks her thumbs in her jeans pockets and pokes her toes against the edge of the threshold, trying to avoid looking him in the eye.

“Thanks for not saying anything about the . . .” she starts to say, but she stops herself before she has to say “wurse.”

Alf shakes his head grumpily.

“You shouldn’t have rushed off like that. If you’ve taken that animal on, you have to bloody shoulder your responsibility for it, even if you’re a kid.”

“I’m not a bloody kid!” snaps Elsa.

“So quit behaving like one, then.”

“Touché,” Elsa whispers at the threshold.

“The animal is in the storage unit. I’ve put up some sheets of plywood so people can’t see inside. Told it to keep its mouth shut. I think it got the point. But you have to find a better hiding place. People will find it sooner or later,” says Alf.

Elsa understands that when he says “people” he means Britt-Marie. And she knows he’s right. She has a terribly bad conscience about abandoning the wurse yesterday. Alf could have called the police and they would have shot it. Elsa abandoned it like Granny abandoned Mum, and this scares her more than any nightmares.

“What are they talking about?” she asks Alf, with a nod towards the kitchen, to shake off the thought.

Alf snorts.

“The bloody leaseholds.”

“What does it mean?”

“Jesus, I can’t stand here explaining everything,” he groans. “The difference between a rental contract and a leasehold in a bloo—”

“I know what a bloody leasehold is, I’m not bloody thick,” says Elsa.

“Why are you asking, then?” says Alf defensively.

“I’m asking what it means; why are they all talking about it!” Elsa clarifies, in the way one clarifies things without being very clear at all.

“Kent has been going on about these sodding leaseholds ever since he moved back in, he won’t be satisfied until he can wipe his ass with the money he’s shat out first,” explains Alf, in the manner of one who doesn’t know very many seven-year-olds. At first Elsa is going to ask what Alf meant when he said that Kent “moved back in,” but she decides to take one thing at a time.

“Won’t we all make money? You and Mum and George and all of us?”

“If we sell the flats and move, yeah,” grunts Alf.

Elsa ponders. Alf creaks his leather jacket.

“And that’s what Kent wants, the bastard. He’s always wanted to move out of here.”

That is why she’s having all these nightmares, she realizes. Because if the creatures from the Land-of-Almost-Awake turn up in the house now, then maybe the house will start to become a part of the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and if they all want to sell their flats, then . . .

“Then we won’t be escaping Miamas. We’ll be leaving of our own free will,” says Elsa out loud to herself.

“What?”

“Nothing,” mumbles Elsa.

The door slamming at the bottom of the house echoes through the stairwell. Then discreet footsteps, heading up. It’s the accountant.



Britt-Marie drowns out Kent’s voice in the kitchen. She doesn’t get any response from Kent insofar as the shirt change goes, so she compensates with a lot of indignation about other things. There is a rich supply of such topics. It’s difficult for her to decide which is most upsetting, of course, but she has time to run through several matters, including her threat to call the police if Elsa’s mum doesn’t immediately move Granny’s car from Britt-Marie’s space in the garage, and also that Britt-Marie will make the police break the lock of the stroller that’s still chained up by the entrance, and that she won’t hesitate to put pressure on the landlord to put up cameras on the stairs, so they can stop the vile malpractice of people coming and going as they please and putting up notices without first informing the head of information. She’s interrupted by the very short man with the very friendly face now standing in the doorway, knocking tentatively against the doorframe.