“What are you doing here?” she sobs.
“You gave me the damned address,” he mutters. “Someone had to bloody pick you up. I’ve been driving a taxicab for thirty years, so I know you just don’t leave little girls anywhere, any-old-how.” He’s quiet for a few breaths before adding, into the floor: “And your grandmother would have bloody beaten the life out of me if I hadn’t picked you up.”
Elsa nods and wipes her face on the wurse’s pelt.
“Is that thing coming as well?” Alf asks grouchily. The wurse looks back at him even more grumpily. Elsa nods and tries not to start crying again.
“It’ll have to go in the trunk, then,” says Alf firmly.
But obviously that is not how things end up. Elsa keeps her face buried in its fur all the way home. It’s one of the very, very best things about wurses: they’re waterproof.
There’s opera coming from the car stereo. At least Elsa thinks it must be opera. She hasn’t really heard very much opera, but she’s heard it mentioned and she supposes this is what it sounds like. When they’re about halfway home, Alf peers with concern at her in the rearview mirror.
“Is there anything you want?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Coffee?”
Elsa raises her head and glares at him.
“I’m seven!”
“What the hell’s that got to do with it?”
“Do you know any seven-year-olds who drink coffee?”
“I don’t know very many seven-year-olds.”
“I can tell.”
“Well, bloody forget it, then,” he grunts.
Elsa lowers her face into the wurse’s pelt. Alf swears a bit in the front, and then after a while he passes her a paper bag. It has the same writing on it as the bakery where Granny always went.
“There’s a cinnamon bun in there,” he says, adding, “But don’t bloody cry all over it or it won’t taste good.”
Elsa cries on it. It’s good anyway.
When they get to the house she runs from the garage up to the flat without even thanking Alf or saying good-bye to the wurse, and without thinking about how Alf has seen the wurse now and might even call the police. Without saying a word to him, she walks right past the dinner that George has put on the kitchen table. When Mum comes home she pretends to be asleep.
And when the drunk starts yelling on the stairs that night, and the singing starts again, Elsa, for the first time, does what all the others in the house do.
She pretends she doesn’t hear.
18
SMOKE
Every fairy tale has a dragon. Thanks to Granny, that is. . . .
Elsa is having terrible nightmares tonight. She’s always dreaded closing her eyes and no longer being able to get to the Land-of-Almost-Awake. The worst thing would be a dreamless sleep. But this is the night she learns of something even worse. Because she can’t get to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and yet she dreams about it. She can see it clearly from above, as if she’s lying on her stomach on top of a huge glass dome, peering down at it. Without being able to smell any smells or hear any laughter or feel the rush of wind over her face when the cloud animals take off. It’s the most terrifying dream of all the eternities.
Miamas is burning.