“I didn’t want to know either until he was born,” says the boy’s mother warmly, “but then I wanted to know everything about him immediately!”
“Yes, exactly, that’s how I feel. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s healthy!”
Guilt wells up in Mum’s face as soon as the last word has escaped her lips. She glances past Elsa towards the wardrobe, where the boy lies sleeping.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—” she manages to say, but the boy’s mum interrupts her at once.
“Oh, don’t say sorry. It’s fine. I know what people say. But he is healthy. He’s just a bit of extra everything, you could say.”
“I like extra everything!” Elsa exclaims happily, but then she also looks ashamed and mumbles: “Except veggie burgers. I always get rid of the tomato.”
And then both the mothers laugh so hard that the flat echoes. And that’s what they both seem to be most in need of. So even though it wasn’t her intention, Elsa decides to take the credit for that.
Alf is waiting for her and the wurse on the stairs. She doesn’t know how he knew they were coming. The darkness outside the house is so compact that if you threw a snowball you’d lose sight of it before it left your glove. They sneak under Britt-Marie’s balcony so they don’t give the wurse away. The wurse backs into a bush and looks as though it would have appreciated having a newspaper or something.
Elsa and Alf turn away respectfully. Elsa clears her throat.
“Thanks for helping me with Renault.”
Alf grunts. Elsa shoves her hands in her jacket pockets.
“Kent’s an asswipe. Someone should poison him!”
Alf’s head turns slowly.
“Don’t say that.”
“What?”
“Don’t bloody talk like that.”
“What? He is an asswipe, isn’t he?”
“Maybe so. But you don’t damn well call him that in front of me!”
“You call him a bloody idiot, like, all the time!”
“Yes. I’m allowed to. You’re not.”
“Why not?”
Alf’s leather jacket creaks.
“Because I’m allowed to get shitty about my little brother. You’re not.”
It takes many different kinds of eternities for Elsa to digest that piece of information.
“I didn’t know that,” she manages to say at last. “Why are you so horrible to each other if you’re brothers?”
“You don’t get to choose your siblings,” mutters Alf.
Elsa doesn’t really know how to answer that. She thinks about Halfie. She’d rather not, so she changes the subject: “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
“Never you bloody mind.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“I’m a damned grown-up. It’s bloody obvious I’ve been in love. Everyone’s been in bloody love sometime.”
“How old were you?”
“The first time?”
“Yes.”
“Ten.”
“And the second time?”
Alf’s leather jacket creaks. He checks his watch and starts heading back to the house.
“There was no second time.”
Elsa is about to ask something else. But that’s when they hear it. Or rather, it’s the wurse that hears it. The scream. The wurse leaps out of the bush and hurtles into the darkness like a black spear. Then Elsa hears its bark for the first time. She thought she’d heard it barking before, but she was wrong. All she’s heard before are yelps and whines compared to this. This bark makes the foundations of the house quake. It’s a battle cry.
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.