“And what? Now it’s mine? The whole house?”
“Your mother will act as your guardian until you’re eighteen. But your grandmother has ensured that you’ll be able to do what you want with it. If you want to, you can sell the flats as leaseholds. And if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”
“So why did you tell everyone in the house that it would be turned into leaseholds if everyone agreed?”
“If you don’t agree then, technically, you’re not all agreed. Your grandmother was convinced you would go with what the neighbors wanted if they were all agreed about it, but she was also certain you wouldn’t do anything with the house that might bring anyone who lived in it to harm. That was why she had to make sure you’d got to know all your neighbors by the time you saw the will.”
He puts his hand on her shoulder.
“It’s a big responsibility, but your grandmother forbade me to give it to anyone but you. She said you were ‘smarter than all those other lunatics put together.’ And she always said that a kingdom consists of the people who live in it. She said you’d understand that.”
Elsa’s fingertips caress Granny’s signature at the bottom of the paper.
“I understand.”
“I can run through the details with you, but it’s a very complicated contract,” says Marcel helpfully.
Elsa brushes her hair out of her face.
“Granny wasn’t exactly an uncomplicated person.”
Marcel belly-laughs. You’d have to call it that. A belly-laugh. It’s far too noisy to be a laugh. Elsa likes it a great deal. It’s quite impossible not to.
“Did you and Granny have an affair?” she asks suddenly.
“ELSA!” Mum interrupts, so distressed that the tubes almost come loose.
Offended, Elsa throws out her arms.
“What’s wrong with ASKING?” She turns demandingly to Marcel. “Did you have an affair or not?”
Marcel puts his hands together. Nods with sadness, also happiness. Like when one has eaten a very large ice cream and realizes it is now gone.
“She was the love of my life, Elsa. She was the love of many men’s lives. Women as well, actually.”
“Were you hers?”
Marcel pauses. He doesn’t look angry. Or bitter. Just slightly jealous.
“No,” he says, “That was you. It was always you, dear Elsa.”
Tenderly he reaches out and pats Elsa’s cheek, as you do when you see someone you have loved in the eyes of their grandchild.
Elsa and Mum and the letter share the silence for seconds and eternities and hummingbird wingbeats. Then Mum touches Elsa’s hand and tries to make the question sound as if it’s not so terribly important, just something she just thought of spontaneously:
“What do you have from me?”
Elsa stands in silence. Mum looks despondent.
“I was just, well, you know. You said you had inherited certain things from your grandmother and from your father, and I was just thinking, you know . . .”
She goes silent. Ashamed of herself as mothers are when they realize they have passed that point in life when they want more from their daughters than their daughters want from them. And Elsa puts her hands over Mum’s cheeks and says mildly:
“Just everything else, Mum. I just have everything else from you.”
Dad gives Elsa a lift back to the house. He turns off the stereo in Audi so Elsa doesn’t have to listen to his music, and he stays the night in Granny’s flat. They sleep in the wardrobe. It smells of wood shavings and it’s just big enough for Dad to be able to stretch out and touch the walls on both sides with his fingertips and the tips of his toes. It’s good in that way, the wardrobe.