My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(99)

“As I said, we don’t beat people to death in this leaseholders’ association,” she replies quickly, so Elsa can’t hear how her emotion is overwhelming her.

They are silent. As you are when you make peace for the second time in two days, but don’t quite want to spell it out to the other person. Britt-Marie fluffs up a cushion at the edge of the waiting-room sofa.

“I didn’t hate your grandmother,” she says without looking at Elsa.

“She didn’t hate you either,” says Elsa, without looking back.

“And actually, I’ve never wanted the flats to be converted to leaseholds. Kent wants it, and I want Kent to be happy, but he wants to sell the flat and make money and move. I don’t want to move.”

“Why not?”

“It’s my home.”

It’s hard not to like her for that.

“Why were you and Granny always fighting?” Elsa asks, although she already knows the answer.

“She thought I was a . . . a nagging busybody,” says Britt-Marie, not revealing the actual reason.

“Why are you like that, then?” asks Elsa, thinking about the princess and the witch and the treasure.

“Because you need to care about something, Elsa. As soon as anyone cared about anything in this world, your granny always dismissed it as ‘nagging,’ but if you don’t care about anything you’re actually not alive at all. You’re only existing. . . .”

“You’re quite deep, you know, Britt-Marie.”

“Thanks.” She clearly has to resist the impulse to start brushing something invisible from Elsa’s coat-arm. She satisfies herself with fluffing up the sofa cushion again, even though it’s been many years since there was last any stuffing in it to fluff up. Elsa threads the scarf around each of her fingers.

“There’s this poem about an old man who says he can’t be loved, so he doesn’t mind, sort of, being disliked instead. As long as someone sees him,” says Elsa.

“Doctor Glas,” says Britt-Marie with a nod.

“Wikipedia,” Elsa corrects.

“No, it’s a quote from Doctor Glas,” insists Britt-Marie.

“Is that a site?”

“It’s a play.”

“Oh.”

“What’s Wikipedia?”

“A site.”

Britt-Marie puts her hands together in her lap.

“In fact, Doctor Glas is a novel, as I understand. I haven’t read it. But they put it on in the theater,” she says hesitantly.

“Oh,” says Elsa.

“I like theater.”

“Me too.”

They both nod.

“?‘Doctor Glas’ would have been a good superhero name,” Elsa says.

She thinks it would actually have been a better name for a superhero nemesis, but Britt-Marie doesn’t look like she reads quality literature on a regular basis, so Elsa doesn’t want to make it too complicated for her.

“?‘We want to be loved,’?” quotes Britt-Marie. “?‘Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.’?”

Elsa is not quite sure what this means, but she nods all the same. “What do you want to be, then?”

“It’s complicated being a grown-up sometimes, Elsa,” Britt-Marie says evasively.

“It’s not, like, easy-peasy being a kid either,” Elsa replies belligerently.

The tips of Britt-Marie’s fingers wander carefully over the white circle on the skin of her ring finger.

“I used to stand on the balcony early in the mornings. Before Kent woke up. Your grandmother knew this, that’s why she made those snowmen. And that’s why I got so angry. Because she knew my secret and it felt as if she and the snowmen were trying to taunt me for it.”

“What secret?”

Britt-Marie clasps her hands together firmly.

“I was never like your grandmother. I never traveled. I was just here. But sometimes I liked to stand on the balcony in the mornings, when it was windy. It’s silly, of course, everyone obviously thinks it’s silly, they do, of course.” She purses her mouth. “But I like to feel the wind in my hair.”

Elsa thinks about how Britt-Marie may, despite everything, not be a total shit after all.

“You didn’t answer the question—what do you want to be?” she says, winding her scarf through her fingers.

Britt-Marie’s fingertips move hesitantly over her skirt, like a person moving across a dance floor to ask someone to dance. And then, cautiously, she utters the words:

“I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here.”

Unfortunately Elsa doesn’t hear the last bit, because the veterinary surgeon comes through the door with a look on his face that creates a surging noise inside Elsa’s head. She has run past him before he has even had time to open his mouth. Elsa hears them shouting after her as she charges down the corridor and starts throwing doors open, one after the other. A nurse tries to grab her, but she just keeps running, throws more doors open, doesn’t stop until she hears the wurse howling. As if it knows she’s on her way and is calling for her. When she finally storms into the right room, she finds it lying on a cold table, a bandage round its stomach. There’s blood everywhere. She buries her face deep, deep, deep in its coat.