“Your grandmother.”
“You’re one of the children on her bedroom ceiling, aren’t you?”
Green-eyes looks directly at her. She smiles again in the real way.
“You’re smart. She always said you were the smartest girl she ever met.”
Elsa nods. The door closes behind her. And it ends up being a beautiful Christmas Eve. Despite everything.
She looks for the wurse in the cellar storage unit and in Renault, but they are both empty. She knows the wardrobe in Granny’s flat is also empty, and the wurse is definitely not in Mum and George’s flat because no healthy being can stand being there on a Christmas morning. Mum is even more efficient than usual at Christmas.
She normally starts her Christmas shopping in May each year. She says it’s because she’s “organized,” but Granny used to disagree and say it was actually because she was “anal,” and then Elsa used to have to wear her headphones for quite a long time. But this year Mum decided to be a bit free-spirited and crazy, so she waited until the first of August before asking what Elsa wanted for Christmas. She was very angry when Elsa refused to tell her, even though Elsa expressly asked if she understood how much someone changes as a person in half a year when they’re almost eight. So Mum did what Mum always does: she went and bought a present on her own initiative. And it went as it usually went: to hell. Elsa knew that because she knew where Mum hid her presents. What do you expect when you buy an almost-eight-year-old her present five months early?
So this year, Elsa is getting three books that are about different themes in some way or other touched upon by various characters in the Harry Potter books. They’re wrapped in a paper that Elsa likes very much. Elsa knows that because Mum’s first present was utterly useless and when Elsa informed her of that in October they argued for about a month and then Elsa’s mum gave up and gave Elsa money instead, so she could go and buy “what you want, then!” And then she wrapped them in a paper she liked very much. And put the parcel in Mum’s not-so-secret place and praised Mum for again being so considerate and sensitive that she knew exactly what Elsa wanted this year. And then Mum called Elsa a “Grinch.”
Elsa has become very attached to this tradition.
She rings Alf’s bell half a dozen times before he opens. He’s got his dressing gown on, his irritated expression, and his Juventus coffee cup.
“What’s the matter?” he barks.
“Merry Christmas!” says Elsa without answering the question.
“I’m sleeping,” he grunts.
“It’s Christmas Eve morning,” Elsa informs him.
“I do know that,” he says.
“Why are you sleeping, then?”
“I was up late last night.”
“Doing what?”
Alf takes a sip of his coffee.
“What are you doing here?”
“I asked first,” Elsa insists.
“I’m not the one standing at your door in the middle of the night!”
“It’s not the middle of the night. And it’s Christmas!”
He drinks some more coffee. She kicks his doormat irritably.
“I can’t find the wurse.”
“I know that as well.” Alf nods casually.
“How?”
“Because it’s here.”
Elsa’s eyebrows shoot up as if they just sat down in wet paint.
“The wurse is here?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“I just bloody did.”
“Why is it here?”
“Because Kent came home at five this morning, and it couldn’t sit on the stairs. Kent would have bloody called the police if he’d found out it was still in the house.”
Elsa peers into Alf’s flat. The wurse is sitting on the floor, lapping at something in a big metal bowl in front of it. It says Juventus on it. The metal bowl, that is.
“How do you know what time Kent came home?”
“Because I was in the garage when he arrived in his bastard BMW,” says Alf impatiently.
“What were you doing in the garage?” asks Elsa patiently.