My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(82)

“I . . . I’m not so good at meeting people.”

“I know. But you don’t seem so good at being on your own either.”

The woman looks at her for a long time, drags her hand slowly through her hair. Elsa stares back determinedly.

“I . . . maybe I can come. A . . . short while.”

“We can buy pizza! If you don’t, you know, like Christmas food,” says Elsa hopefully.

The woman smiles. Elsa smiles back.

Alf comes out of Granny’s flat just as Elsa’s climbing the stairs. The boy with a syndrome is circling him happily, doing a little dance, and Alf has an enormous toolbox in one hand, which he tries to hide when he catches sight of Elsa.

“What are you doing?” asks Elsa.

“Nothing,” Alf says evasively.

The boy jumps into Mum and George’s flat and heads towards a large bowl of chocolate Santas. Alf tries to get past Elsa on the stairs but Elsa stands in his way.

“What’s that?” she asks, pointing at the toolbox.

“Nothing!” Alf repeats and tries to hide it behind his back.

He smells strongly of wood shavings, Elsa notices.

“Sure it’s nothing!” she says grumpily.

She tries to stop feeling like an idiot. It doesn’t go so very well.

She looks into the flat at the boy. He looks happy in the way that only an almost-seven-year-old can look happy when standing in front of a whole big bowl of chocolate Santas. Elsa wonders if he’s waiting for the real Santa, who isn’t made of chocolate. Obviously, Elsa doesn’t believe in Santa, but she has a lot of faith in people who do believe in him. She used to write letters to Santa every Christmas, not just wish lists but whole letters. They weren’t very much about Christmas, mainly about politics. Because Elsa mostly felt that Santa wasn’t involving himself enough in social questions, and believed he needed to be informed about that, in the midst of the floods of greedy letters that she knew he must be receiving from all the other children every year. Someone had to take a bit of responsibility. One year she’d seen the Coca-Cola ad, and that time her letter was quite a lot about how Santa was a “soulless sellout.” Another year she’d seen a TV documentary about child labor and, immediately after that, quite a few American Christmas comedies, and because she was unsure whether Santa’s definition of “elf” should be classified as the same as the elves that exist in Old Norse mythology or the ones that live in forests in Tolkien’s world, or just in the general sense of a short person, sort of thing, she demanded that Santa immediately get back to her with a precise definition.

Santa never did, so Elsa sent another letter that was very long and angry. The year after, Elsa had learned how to use Google, so then she knew the reason for Santa never answering was that he didn’t exist. So she didn’t write any more letters. She mentioned to Mum and Granny the next day that Santa didn’t exist, and Mum got so upset that she choked on her mulled wine, and when Granny saw this she immediately turned dramatically to Elsa and pretended to be even more upset, and burst out: “DON’T you talk like that, Elsa! If you do, you’re just reality-challenged!”

Mum didn’t laugh at all about that, which didn’t bother Granny, but on the other hand Elsa did laugh a good deal, and that pleased Granny immeasurably. And the day before Christmas, Elsa had a letter from Santa in which he gave her a right ticking-off because she’d “got herself an attitude,” and then there followed a long haranguing passage that started with “you ungrateful bloody brat” and went on to say that because Elsa had stopped believing in Santa, the elves hadn’t been able to reach a proper collective agreement on salaries that year.

“I know you wrote this,” Elsa had hissed at Granny.

“How?” Granny asked with exaggerated outrage

“Because not even Santa is so dumb that he spells ‘collective’ with a double ‘t’!”

And then Granny had looked a little less outraged and apologized. And then she tried to get Elsa to run to the shop to buy a cigarette lighter, in exchange for Granny “timing her.” But Elsa didn’t fall for that one.

And then Granny had grumpily got out her newly purchased Santa suit, and they went to the children’s hospital where Granny’s friend worked. Granny went around all day telling fairy tales to children with terrible diseases and Elsa followed behind her, distributing toys. That was Elsa’s best-ever Christmas. They would make a tradition of it, Granny promised, but it was a really crappy tradition because they only had time to do it one year before she went and died.

Elsa looks at the boy, then at Alf, and locks eyes with him. When the boy catches sight of a bowl of chocolate Santas and disappears from view, Elsa slips into the flat’s front hall, opens the chest in there, and pulls out the Santa suit. She goes back onto the landing and presses it into Alf’s arms.

Alf looks at it as if just tried to tickle him.

“What’s that?”

“What does it look like?” asks Elsa.

“Forget it!” says Alf dismissively, pushing the costume back towards Elsa.

“Forget that you can forget about it!” says Elsa, and pushes the costume back even more.

“Your grandmother said you don’t even believe in bloody Santa,” mutters Alf.

Elsa rolls her eyes.