COFFEE
There’s something special about a grandmother’s house. You never forget how it smells.
It’s a normal building, by and large. It has four floors and nine flats and the whole block smells of Granny (and coffee, thanks to Lennart). It also has a clear set of regulations pinned up in the laundry, with the heading FOR EVERYONE’S WELL-BEING in which WELL-BEING has been underlined twice. And a lift that’s always broken and rubbish separated for recycling in the yard, and a drunk, a very large animal of some sort, and, of course, a granny.
Granny lives at the top, opposite Mum and Elsa and George. Granny’s flat is exactly like Mum’s except much messier, because Granny’s flat is like Granny and Mum’s flat is like Mum.
George lives with Mum and that’s not always the easiest of things, because it means he also lives next door to Granny. He has a beard and a very small hat and is obsessed with jogging, during which he insists on wearing his shorts over the top of his tracksuit. He cooks in English, and so when he’s reading the recipes he says “pork” instead of “flask.” Granny never calls him “George,” just “Loser,” which infuriates Mum, but Elsa knows why Granny’s doing it. She just wants Elsa to know she’s on Elsa’s side, no matter what. Because that’s what you do when you’re a granny and your grandchild’s parents get divorced and find themselves new partners and suddenly tell your grandchild there’s a half sibling on its way. That it irritates the hell out of Mum is something Granny views purely as a bonus.
Mum and George don’t want to know if Halfie is a boy-half or a girl-half, even though it’s easy to find out. It’s especially important for George not to know. He always calls Halfie she/he, so he doesn’t “trap the child in a gender role.” The first time he said it, Elsa thought he said “gender troll.” It ended up being a very confusing afternoon for all involved.
Halfie is either going to be called Elvir or Elvira, Mum and George have decided. When Elsa told Granny this, she just stared at her.
“ELV-ir?!”
“It’s the boy version of Elvira.”
“Elvir, though? Are they planning to send him to Mordor to destroy the ring, or what?” (This was soon after Granny had watched all of the Lord of the Rings films with Elsa, because Elsa’s mum had expressly told Elsa she wasn’t allowed to watch them.)
Obviously Elsa knows that Granny doesn’t dislike Halfie. Or even George, really. She just talks that way because she’s Granny. One time Elsa told Granny she really did hate George, and that sometimes she even hated Halfie too. It’s very difficult not to love someone who can hear you say something as horrible as that and still be on your side.