My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(60)

She can’t even be angry at Granny in a normal way. Not even that is normal about Granny.

She stands in silence next to Alf and blinks until her head hurts. Alf tries to look unconcerned, but Elsa notices that he’s scanning the darkness, as if looking for someone. He watches their surroundings much like Wolfheart and the wurse. As if he’s also on guard duty. She squints and tries to fit him into Granny’s life, like a piece of a puzzle. She can’t recall Granny ever talking very much about him, except that he never knew how to lift his feet, which was why the soles of his shoes were always so worn down.

“How well did you know Granny?” she asks.

The leather jacket creaks.

“What do you mean, ‘knew?’ We were bloody neighbors, that’s all,” Alf answers evasively.

“So what did you mean when you picked me up in the taxi, when you said Granny would never have forgiven you if you’d left me there?”

More creaking.

“I didn’t mean anything, not a blo—nothing. I just happened to be in the area. Bloody . . .”

He sounds frustrated. Elsa nods, pretending to understand in a way that Alf clearly doesn’t appreciate at all.

“Why are you here, then?” she asks teasingly.

“What?”

“Why did you follow me outside? Shouldn’t you be driving your taxi now or something?”

“You don’t have a blo—you don’t have exclusive rights to taking walks, you know.”

“Sure, sure.”

“I can’t let you and the mutt run loose here at night on your own. Your granny would have blo—”

He interrupts himself. Grunts. Sighs.

“Your granny would never have forgiven me if something happened to you.”

He looks as if he already regrets saying that.

“Did you and Granny have an affair?” Elsa asks, after waiting for what seems a more than adequate length of time. Alf looks like she just threw a yellow snowball in his face.

“Aren’t you a bit young to know what that means?”

“There are loads of things I’m too young to know about, but I know about them anyway.” She clears her throat and carries on: “Once when I was small, Mum was going to explain what her work was, because I’d asked Dad and he didn’t really seem to know. And then Mum said she worked as an economist. And then I said, ‘What?’ and then she said, ‘I work out how much money the hospital has, so we know what we can buy.’ And then I said, ‘What, like in a shop?’ And then she said that, yeah, sort of like in a shop, and it wasn’t hard to get it at all and so really Dad was being a bit thick about it.”

Alf checks his watch.

“But then, anyway, I saw a TV series where two people had a shop. And they had an affair, or at least I think they did. So now I get what it means, sort of thing. And I thought that was kind of how you and Granny knew each other! So . . . did you or didn’t you?”

“Is that mutt done now or what? Some of us have jobs to go to,” Alf mutters, which isn’t much of an answer. He turns towards the bushes.

Elsa scrutinizes him thoughtfully.

“I just thought you could be Granny’s type. Because you’re a bit younger than she is. And she always flirted with policemen who were about your age. They were sort of too old to be policemen but they were still policemen. Not that you’re a policeman, I mean. But you’re also old without being . . . really old. Get what I mean?”

Alf doesn’t look like he really gets it. And he looks like he’s got a bit of a migraine.

The wurse finishes, and the three of them head back inside, Elsa in the middle. It’s not a big army, but it’s an army, thinks Elsa and feels a little less afraid of the dark. When they part ways in the cellar between the door to the garage and the door to the storage units, Elsa scrapes her shoe against the floor and asks Alf, “What was that music you were listening to in the car when you came to pick me up? Was it opera?”

“Holy Christ, enough questions!”

“I was only asking!”

“Blo—yeah. It was a bastard opera.”

“What language was it in?”

“Italian.”

“Can you talk Italian?”

“Yeah.”

“For real?”

“What other bloody way is there to know Italian?”

“But, like, fluently?”

“You have to find another hiding place for that thing, I told you,” he says, gesturing at the wurse, clearly trying to change the subject. “People will find it sooner or later.”

“Do you know Italian or not?”

“I know enough to understand an opera. You got any other bast—questions?”

“What was that opera about in the car, then?” she persists.

Alf pulls open the garage door.

“Love. They’re all about love, the whole lot.”

He pronounces the world “love” a little as one would say words like “refrigerator” or “two-inch screw.”

“WERE YOU IN LOVE WITH MY GRANNY THEN?” Elsa yells after him, but he’s already slammed the door.

She stays there, grinning. The wurse does too, she’s almost sure about that. And it’s much more difficult being afraid of shadows and the dark while grinning.