“Then I just sort of . . . stayed on.”
Elsa looks at him with seriousness. Takes a deep, concluding breath and says: “I like you very much, Alf. But you were a bit of a shit when you went away like that.”
Alf coughs or laughs again.
After the next red light he mutters:
“Britt-Marie took care of your mother when her father died. While your grandmother was still traveling a lot, you know. She wasn’t always the nagbag she is now.”
“I know,” says Elsa.
“Did your grandmother tell you that?”
“In a way. She told me a story about a princess in a kingdom of sorrow, and two princes who loved her so much that they began to hate each other. And the wurses were driven into exile by the princess’s parents, but then the princess fetched them back when the war came. And about a witch who stole a treasure from the princess.”
She goes silent. Crosses her arms. Turns to Alf.
“I was the treasure, right?”
Alf sighs.
“I’m not so big on fairy tales.”
“You could make an effort!”
“Britt-Marie has given her whole life to being there for a man who is never home, and trying to make someone else’s children love her. When your grandfather died and she could be there for your mother, it was perhaps the first time she felt . . .”
He seems to be looking for the right word. Elsa gives it to him.
“Needed.”
“Yes.”
“And then Mum grew up?”
“She moved away. Went to university. The house went bloody quiet, for a bloody long time. And then she came back with your father and was pregnant.”
“I was going to be all of Britt-Marie’s second chances,” Elsa says in a low voice, nodding.
“And then your grandmother came home,” says Alf, and stops by a stop sign.
They don’t say a lot more about that. Like you don’t when there’s not a great deal more to be said. Alf briefly puts his hand on his chest, as if something is itching under his jacket.
Elsa looks at the zip.
“Did you get that scar in a war?”
Alf’s gaze becomes somewhat defensive. She shrugs.
“You’ve got a massive scar on your chest. I saw it when you were wearing your dressing gown. You really should buy yourself a new dressing gown, by the way.”
“I was never in that sort of war. No one ever fired at me.”
“So that’s why you’re not broken?”
“Broken like who?”
“Sam. And Wolfheart.”
“Sam was broken before he became a soldier. And not all soldiers are like that. But if you see the shit those boys saw, you need some help when you get back. And this country’s so bloody willing to put billions into weapons and fighter jets, but when those boys come home and they’ve seen the shit they’ve seen, no one can be bothered to listen to them even for five minutes.”
He looks gloomily at Elsa.
“People have to tell their stories, Elsa. Or they suffocate.”
“Where did you get the scar, then?”
“It’s a pacemaker.”
“Oh!”
“You know what it is?” Alf asks skeptically.
Elsa looks slightly offended.
“You really are a different damned kid.”
“It’s good to be different.”
“I know.”
They drive up the highway while Elsa tells Alf that Iron Man, who’s a kind of superhero, has a type of pacemaker. But really it’s more of an electromagnet, because Iron Man has shrapnel in his heart and without the magnet the shrapnel would cut holes in it and then he’d die. Alf doesn’t look as though he entirely understands the finer points of the story, but he listens without interrupting.
“But they operate on him and remove the magnet at the end of the third film!” Elsa tells him excitedly, then clears her throat and adds, slightly shamefaced: “Spoiler alert. Sorry.”