She nods. They hug briefly. Relieved, Dad disappears out the door, and Elsa darts up the stairs before Britt-Marie has time to start talking to her again. Outside Our Friend’s flat she stops briefly, peers back over her shoulder to make sure Britt-Marie is not watching, then opens the mail slot to whisper, “Please, be quiet!” She knows that it understands. She hopes that it cares.
She runs up the last flight of stairs with the keys to the flat in her hand, but she doesn’t go into Mum and George’s flat. Instead she opens Granny’s door. There are storage boxes and a scouring bucket in the kitchen; she tries not to pay any attention to those, but fails. She hops into the big wardrobe. The darkness inside the wardrobe settles around her, and no one knows she is crying.
It used to be magic, this wardrobe. Elsa used to be able to lie full-length in it and only just reach the walls with her toes and fingertips. However much she grew, the wardrobe was exactly the right size. Granny maintained, of course, that it was all “faffing about because this wardrobe has always been exactly the same size,” but Elsa has measured it. So she knows.
She lies down, stretching herself as far as she can. Touching both walls. In a few months she won’t have to reach. In a year she won’t be able to lie here at all. Because nothing will be magic anymore.
She can hear Maud’s and Lennart’s muted voices in the flat, can smell their coffee. Elsa knows Samantha is also there long before she hears the sound of the bichon frise’s paws in the living room and, shortly after, its snoring under Granny’s sofa table. Maud and Lennart are tidying up Granny’s flat and starting to pack up her things. Mum has asked them to help, and Elsa hates Mum for that. Hates everyone for it.
Soon she hears Britt-Marie’s voice as well. As if she’s pursuing Maud and Lennart. She’s very angry. Only wants to talk about who’s had the cheek to put up that sign in the vestibule, and who’s been impudent enough to lock up that stroller directly under the sign. It seems very unclear, also to Britt-Marie herself, which of these two occurrences is the most upsetting to her. But at least she doesn’t mention Our Friend again.
Elsa has been in the wardrobe for an hour when the boy with a syndrome comes crawling in. Through the half-open door Elsa sees his mother walking about, tidying, and how Maud carefully walks behind her, picking up the things that are falling all around her.
Lennart puts a big platter of dreams outside the wardrobe. Elsa pulls them inside and closes the door, and then she and the boy with a syndrome eat them in silence. The boy doesn’t say anything, because he never does. That is one of Elsa’s favorite things about him.
She hears George’s voice in the kitchen. It’s warm and reassuring; it asks if anyone wants eggs, because in that case he’ll cook eggs. Everyone likes George, it’s his superpower. Elsa hates him for that. Then Elsa hears her mum’s voice, and for a moment she wants to run out and throw herself into her arms. But she doesn’t, because she wants her mother to be upset. Elsa knows she has already won, but she wants Mum to know it too. Just to make sure she’s hurting as much as Elsa is about Granny dying.
The boy falls asleep at the bottom of the wardrobe. His mother gently opens the door soon after, and crawls inside and lifts him out. It’s as if she knew he had fallen asleep the minute he did. Maybe that is her superpower.
Moments later Maud crawls inside and carefully picks up all the things the boy’s mother dropped when she was picking him up.
“Thanks for the cookies,” whispers Elsa.
Maud pats her on the cheek and looks so upset on Elsa’s behalf that Elsa gets upset on Maud’s behalf.