My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(85)

Elsa gets there first. She’s better at running than Alf.

Britt-Marie is standing, white-faced, a few yards from the door. There’s a carrier bag of food dropped on the snow. Lollipops and comic books have spilled out of it. A stone’s throw away stands Sam.

With a knife in his hand.

The wurse stands resolutely between them, its front paws planted like concrete pillars in the snow, its teeth bared. Sam isn’t moving, but Elsa can see that he’s hesitating. He slowly turns around and sees her, and his gaze pulverizes her spine. Her knees want to give way and let her sink into the snow and disappear. The knife glitters in the glow of the streetlights. Sam’s hand hovers in the air, his body rigid with animosity. His eyes eat their way into her, cold and warlike. But the knife isn’t directed at her, she can see that.

Elsa can hear Britt-Marie sobbing. She doesn’t know where the instinct comes from, or the courage, or maybe it’s just pure stupidity—Granny always used to say that she and Elsa were the sort of people who, deep down, were a bit soft in the head, and it would get them in trouble sooner or later—but Elsa runs. Runs right at Sam. She can see him bring the knife down confidently by a few inches, and that the other hand is raised like a claw to catch her as she leaps.

But she doesn’t have time to get there. She collides with something dry and black. Feels the smell of dry leather. Hears the creaking of Alf’s jacket.

And then Alf is standing in front of Sam, with the same ominous body language. Elsa sees the hammer sliding into his palm from the coat-arm. Alf swings it calmly from side to side. Sam’s knife doesn’t move. They do not take their eyes off each other.

Elsa doesn’t know how long they stand there. For how many eternities of fairy tales. It feels like all of them. It feels as if she has time to die. As if the terror is cracking her heart.

“The police are on their way,” Alf finally utters in a low voice. He sounds as if he thinks it’s a pity. That they can’t just finish this here and now.

Sam’s eyes wander calmly from Alf to the wurse. The wurse’s hackles are raised. It growls like rolling thunder from its lungs. A faint smile steals across Sam’s lips for an unbearable length of time. Then he takes a single step back and the darkness engulfs him.

The police car skids into the street, but Sam is long gone by then. Elsa collapses into the snow as if her clothes have been emptied of whatever was in there. She feels Alf catching her and hears him hissing at the wurse to run up the stairs before the police catch sight of it. She hears Britt-Marie panting and the police crunching through the snow. But her consciousness is already fading, far away. She’s ashamed of it, ashamed of being so afraid that she just closes her eyes and escapes into her mind. No knight of Miamas was ever so paralyzed with fear. A real knight would have stayed in position, straight-backed, not taken refuge in sleep. But she can’t help it. It’s too much reality for an almost-eight-year-old.

She wakes up on the bed in Granny’s bedroom. It’s warm. She feels the wurse’s nose against her shoulder and pats its head.

“You’re so brave,” she whispers.

The wurse looks as if maybe it deserves a cookie. Elsa slips out of the sweaty sheets, onto the floor. Through the doorway she sees Mum standing in the front hall, her face gray. She’s shouting furiously at Alf, so angry she’s crying. Alf stands there in silence, taking it. Elsa runs through into Mum’s arms.

“It wasn’t their fault, they were only trying to protect me!” Elsa sobs.

Britt-Marie’s voice interrupts her.

“No, it was obviously my fault! My fault, it was. Everything was obviously my fault, Ulrika.”

Elsa turns to Britt-Marie, realizing as she does so that Maud and Lennart and the boy with a syndrome’s mum are also in the hall. Everyone looks at Britt-Marie. She clasps her hands together over her stomach.

“He was standing outside the door, hiding, but I caught the smell of those cigarettes, I did. So I told him that in this leaseholders’ association we don’t smoke! And then he got out that . . .”

Britt-Marie can’t bring herself to say “knife” without her voice breaking again. She looks offended, as you do when you’re the last to learn a secret.

“You all know who he is, of course! But obviously none of you thought to warn me about it, oh no. Even though I’m the information officer in this residents’ association!”

She straightens out a wrinkle in her skirt. A real wrinkle, this time. The bag of lollipops and comics is by her feet. Maud tries to put a tender hand on Britt-Marie’s arm, but Britt-Marie removes it. Maud smiles wistfully.

“Where is Kent?” she asks softly.

“He’s at a business meeting!” Britt-Marie snaps.

Alf looks at her, then at the bag from the supermarket, and then at her again.

“What were you doing out so late?” Mum says.

“Kent’s children get lollipops and comics when they come for Christmas! Always! I was at the shop!”

“Sorry, Britt-Marie. We just didn’t know what to say. Look, why don’t you just stay here tonight, at least? It may be safer if we’re all together?”

Britt-Marie surveys them over the tip of her nose.

“I’m sleeping at home. Kent is coming home tonight. I’m always home when Kent arrives.”

The policewoman with the green eyes comes up the stairs behind her. Britt-Marie spins around. The green eyes stay on her, watchfully.