My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(72)

And Elsa still has a thousand questions but does not ask any of them. She just covers Mum and Halfie with the blanket and kisses Mum on the cheek and forces herself to be brave. Because she has to do what Granny made her promise to do: protect the castle, protect her family, protect her friends.

Mum’s hand fumbles for her as she’s standing up, and just as Elsa is about to go, Mum whispers in a half-asleep state:

“All the photos on the ceiling in your grandmother’s bedroom, darling. All the children in the photos. They were the ones who came to the funeral today. They’re grown-up now. They were allowed to grow up because your granny saved their lives. . . .”

And then Mum is asleep again. Elsa is not entirely sure that she even woke up.

“No shit, Sherlock,” whispers Elsa as she switches off the lamp. Because it wasn’t so hard working out who the strangers were. It was forgiving them that was hard.

Mum sleeps with a smile on her lips. Elsa carefully shuts the door.



The flat smells of dishcloth, and George is collecting used coffee cups. The strangers were all here today drinking coffee after the funeral. They smiled sympathetically at Elsa and Elsa hates them for it. Hates that they knew Granny before she did. She goes into Granny’s flat and lies on Granny’s bed. The streetlight outside plays against the photos on the ceiling, and, as she watches, Elsa still doesn’t know if she can forgive Granny for leaving Mum on her own so she could save other children. She doesn’t know if Mum can forgive it either. Even if she seems to be trying.

She goes out the door, into the stairwell, thinking to herself that she’ll go back to the wurse in the garage. But instead, she sinks listlessly onto the floor. Sits there forever. Tries to think but only finds emptiness and silence where usually there are thoughts.

She can hear the footsteps coming from a couple floors down—soft, padding gently, as if they’re lost. Not at all the self-assured, energetic pacing the woman in the black skirt used to have when she was still smelling of mint and talking into a white cable. She wears jeans now. And no white cable. She stops about ten steps below Elsa.

“Hi,” says the woman.

She looks small. Sounds tired, but it’s a different kind of tiredness than usual. A better tiredness, this time. And she smells of neither mint nor wine. Just shampoo.

“Hello,” says Elsa.

“I went to the churchyard today,” says the woman slowly.

“You were at the funeral?”

The woman shakes her head apologetically. “I wasn’t there. Sorry. I . . . I couldn’t. But I . . .” She swallows the words. Looks down at her hands. “I went to my . . . my boys’ graves. I haven’t been there in a very long time.”

“Did it help?” asks Elsa.

The woman’s lips disappear.

“I don’t know.”

Elsa nods. The lights in the stairwell go out. She waits for her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. Finally the woman seems to gather all her strength into a smile, and the skin around her mouth doesn’t crack quite as much anymore.

“How was the funeral?” she asks.

Elsa shrugs.

“Like a normal funeral. Far too many people.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to share one’s sorrow with people one doesn’t know. But I think . . . there were many people who were very fond of your grandmother.”

Elsa lets her hair fall over her face. The woman scratches her neck.

“It’s . . . I understand it’s hard. To know that your granny left home to help strangers somewhere else. . . . Me, for instance.”

Elsa looks slightly suspicious. It’s as if the woman read her thoughts.

“It’s known as ‘the trolley problem.’ In ethics. I mean, for students. At university. It’s . . . it’s the discussion of whether it’s morally right to sacrifice one person in order to save many others. You can probably read about it on Wikipedia.”

Elsa doesn’t respond. The woman seems to become ill at ease.

“You look angry.”

Elsa shrugs and tries to decide what she’s most angry about. There’s a fairly long list.

“I’m not angry at you. I’m just angry at stupid Britt-Marie,” she decides to say in the end.

The woman looks slightly confused and glances down at what she’s holding in her hands. Her fingers drum against it.

“Don’t fight with monsters, for you can become one. If you look into the abyss for long enough, the abyss looks into you.”

“What are you talking about?” Elsa bursts out, secretly pleased that the woman speaks to her as if Elsa is not a child.

“Sorry, that’s . . . that was Nietzsche. He was a German philosopher. It’s . . . ah, I’m probably misquoting him. But I think it could mean that if you hate the one who hates, you could risk becoming like the one you hate.”

Elsa’s shoulders shoot up to her ears.

“Granny always said: ‘Don’t kick the shit, it’ll go all over the place!’?”

And that’s the first time Elsa hears the woman in the black skirt, who now wears jeans, really burst out laughing.

“Yes, yes, that’s probably a better way of putting it.”

She’s beautiful when she laughs. It suits her. And then she takes two steps towards Elsa and reaches out as far as she can to give her the envelope that she’s holding, without having to move too close.