Elsa interrupts impatiently:
“I know! They got their names when Granny met Wolfheart, she named them after things in his mother’s language. And she took his own language and made it into the secret language so he’d teach her and she could talk to him. But why didn’t she bring you with her, in that case? Why didn’t Granny show you the Land-of-Almost-Awake?”
Gently, Mum bites her lip.
“She wanted to bring me, darling. Many times. But I didn’t want to go.”
“Why not?”
“I was getting older. I was an angry teenager, and I didn’t want my mother telling me fairy tales on the phone anymore, I wanted to have her here. I wanted her in reality.”
Elsa hardly ever hears her say “my mother.” She almost always says, “your grandmother.”
“I wasn’t an easy child, darling. I argued a lot. I said no to everything. Your grandmother always called me ‘the girl who said no.’?”
Elsa’s eyes open wide. Mum sighs and smiles at the same time, as if one emotional expression is trying to swallow the other.
“Well, I was probably many things in your grandmother’s stories. Both the girl and the queen, I think. In the end I didn’t know where the fantasy ended and reality began. Sometimes I don’t even think your grandmother knew herself.”
Elsa lies in silence staring up at the ceiling, with the wurse breathing softly in her ear. She thinks about Wolfheart and the sea-angel, living next door for so many years without anyone knowing the first thing about them. If holes were drilled in the walls and floors of the house, all the neighbors could reach out and touch one another, that was how close their lives were, and yet in the end they knew almost nothing about the others. And so the years just went by.
“Have you found the keys?” asks Elsa, pointing at Renault’s dashboard.
Mum shakes her head.
“I think your grandmother hid them. Presumably just to tease Britt-Marie. That must be why it’s parked in Britt-Marie’s space. . . .”
“Does Britt-Marie even have her own car?” asks Elsa, because from where she’s lying she can clearly see BMW, Kent’s ridiculously oversize car.
“No. But she had a car many years ago. A white one. And it’s still her parking spot. I think it’s about the principle. It’s usually about the principle with Britt-Marie,” says Mum with a smirk.
Elsa doesn’t quite know what that means. She doesn’t know if it makes any difference either.
“How did Renault get here, then? If no one has the key for it?” she thinks aloud, although she knows Mum won’t be able to answer because she doesn’t know either. So she asks Mum to tell her about the shadow. Mum brushes her hand over her cheek again and levers herself up laboriously from the seat, with one hand over Halfie.
“I think Maud and Lennart will have to tell you about him, darling.”
Elsa wants to protest, but Mum has already climbed out of Renault, so Elsa doesn’t have much choice but to follow her. That is Mum’s superpower, after all. Mum brings Wolfheart’s coat. She says she’s going to wash it so he can have it when he comes home. Elsa likes thinking about that. How he’s coming home.
They put blankets over the wurse in the backseat and Mum calmly cautions it to stay still if it hears anyone coming. And it agrees. Elsa promises it several times that she’ll find a better hiding place, although it can’t seem to see the point of this. On the other hand, it looks very pleased about her going off to find more cookies.
Alf is standing guard at the bottom of the cellar stairs.
“I made coffee,” he mutters.
Mum gratefully accepts a cup. Alf hands Elsa the other cup.
“I told you I don’t drink coffee,” says Elsa tiredly.
“It’s not bloody coffee, it’s one of those O’boy drinking-chocolate bastards,” Alf answers indignantly.
Elsa peers into the cup, surprised.
“Where’d you get this from?” she asks. Mum never lets her have O’boy at home because there’s too much sugar in it.