And now here Elsa stands, on the landing, peeling off wrappers from the Daim chocolate. She throws in the first one so quickly that the flap slams when she lets go of it. She holds her breath and feels her heart thumping in her whole head. But then she remembers Granny saying that this needs to be done quickly, so Britt-Marie doesn’t get suspicious during the residents’ meeting downstairs.
Britt-Marie really hates Our Friend. Elsa tries to remind herself that, in spite of it all, she is a knight of Miamas, and after that she opens the mail slot with more courage.
She hears its breath. It sounds like there’s a rockfall going on in its lungs. Elsa’s heart thumps until she’s sure Our Friend will feel the vibrations through the door.
“My granny says to tell you she’s sorry for not bringing you any sweets for such a long time!” she says diligently through the mail slot, removing fistfuls of wrappers and dropping them on the floor.
Then she hears it moving and snatches back her hand, startled. There’s silence for a few seconds. She hears the abrupt crunch of Our Friend taking the chocolate in its jaws.
“Granny’s ill,” Elsa explains while it’s eating.
She isn’t prepared for the way the words tremble as they come out of her. She convinces herself that Our Friend is breathing more slowly. She empties in more chocolate.
“She has cancer,” whispers Elsa.
Elsa has no friends, so she isn’t quite sure of the normal procedure for these types of errands. But she imagines that if she did have friends, she’d want them to know if she had cancer. Even if they happened to be the biggest things of anything. “She sends her best and says sorry,” she whispers into the darkness and drops in the rest of the chocolate and gently closes the flap.
She stays there for a moment, looking at Our Friend’s door.
And then at The Monster’s. If this wild animal can be hiding behind one of the doors, she doesn’t even want to know what might be behind the other.
Then she jogs down the stairs to the front entrance.
George is still in the laundry. In the meeting room, they are all drinking coffee and arguing.
Because it’s a normal house.
By and large.
4
BEER
The room in the hospital smells as bad and feels as cold as hospital rooms tend to when it is barely above freezing outside and someone has hid beer bottles under her pillow and opened a window to try to get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke. It hasn’t worked.
Granny and Elsa are playing Monopoly. Granny doesn’t say anything about cancer, for Elsa’s sake. And Elsa doesn’t say anything about death, for Granny’s sake. Because Granny doesn’t like talking about death, especially not her own. So when Elsa’s mum and the doctors leave the room to talk in low, serious voices in the corridor, Elsa tries not to look worried. That doesn’t really work either.
Granny grins secretively.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I fixed a job for the dragons in Miamas?” she asks in their secret language.
It’s good to have a secret language in the hospital, because hospitals have ears in their walls, says Granny. Especially when the walls have Elsa’s mum as their boss.
“Duh—obviously!”