Alf shifts something in the toolbox and then stuffs in the Santa suit.
“Most likely they told her a whole lot of damned things she wasn’t allowed to do, for a range of different reasons. But she damned well did them all the same. A few years after she was born they were still telling girls they couldn’t vote in the bleeding elections, but now the girls do it all the same. That’s damned well how you stand up to bastards who tell you what you can and can’t do. You bloody do those things all the bloody same.”
Elsa watches her shoes. Alf watches his toolbox. Then Elsa goes into the hall, takes two chocolate Santas, eats one of them, and throws the other to Alf, who catches it in his free hand. He shrugs slightly.
“I think your grandmother would have wanted you to dress up as any old damned thing you wanted.”
With that he shuffles off, his Italian opera music seeping out as he opens his door and closes it behind him. Elsa goes into the hall and fetches the whole bowl of chocolate Santas. Then she takes the boy’s hand and calls the wurse. All three of them go across the landing to Granny’s flat, where they crawl into the magic wardrobe that stopped growing when Granny died. It smells of wood shavings in there. And, in fact, it has magically grown to the exact dimensions needed to accommodate two children and a wurse.
The boy with a syndrome mainly keeps his eyes shut, and Elsa brings him to the Land-of-Almost-Awake. They fly over all six kingdoms, and when they turn towards Mimovas the boy recognizes where he is. He jumps off the cloud animal and starts running. When he gets to the city gates, where the music of Mimovas comes pouring out, he starts dancing. He dances beautifully. And Elsa dances with him.
27
MULLED WINE
The wurse wakes Elsa up later that night because it needs a pee. She mumbles sleepily that maybe the wurse shouldn’t have drunk so much mulled wine and tries to go back to sleep. But unfortunately the wurse begins to look sort of like wurses do when they’re planning to pee on a Gryffindor scarf, whereupon Elsa snatches the scarf away and reluctantly agrees to take it out.
When they get out of the wardrobe, Elsa’s mum and the boy with a syndrome’s mum are still up making up the beds.
“It needs a pee,” Elsa explains wearily. Mum nods reluctantly but says she has to take Alf with her.
Elsa nods. The boy with a syndrome’s mum smiles at her.
“I understand from Maud that it might have been you that left your grandmother’s letter in our mailbox yesterday.”
Elsa fixes her gaze on her socks.
“I was going to ring the bell, but I didn’t want to, you know. Disturb. Sort of thing.”
The boy’s mum smiles again.
“She wrote sorry. Your grandmother, I mean. Sorry for not being able to protect us anymore. And she wrote that I should trust you. Always. And then she asked me to try to get you to trust me.”
“Can I ask you something that could be sort of impolite?” ventures Elsa, poking at the palm of her hand.
“Absolutely.”
“How can you stand being alive and being afraid all the time? I mean, when you know there’s someone like Sam out there hunting you?”
“Darling, Elsa . . .” whispers Elsa’s mum and smiles apologetically at the boy’s mother, who just waves her hand dismissively to show that it doesn’t matter at all.
“Your grandmother used to say that sometimes we have to do things that are dangerous, because otherwise we aren’t really human.”
“She nicked that from The Brothers Lionheart,” says Elsa.
The boy’s mother turns to Elsa’s mum and looks as if she’d like to change the subject. Maybe more for Elsa’s sake than her own. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
Mum grins almost guiltily and shakes her head.
“We want to wait until the birth.”
“It’s going to be a she/he,” Elsa informs her. Her mum looks embarrassed.