“Is that mutt done now or what? Some of us have jobs to go to,” Alf mutters, which isn’t much of an answer. He turns towards the bushes.
Elsa scrutinizes him thoughtfully.
“I just thought you could be Granny’s type. Because you’re a bit younger than she is. And she always flirted with policemen who were about your age. They were sort of too old to be policemen but they were still policemen. Not that you’re a policeman, I mean. But you’re also old without being . . . really old. Get what I mean?”
Alf doesn’t look like he really gets it. And he looks like he’s got a bit of a migraine.
The wurse finishes, and the three of them head back inside, Elsa in the middle. It’s not a big army, but it’s an army, thinks Elsa and feels a little less afraid of the dark. When they part ways in the cellar between the door to the garage and the door to the storage units, Elsa scrapes her shoe against the floor and asks Alf, “What was that music you were listening to in the car when you came to pick me up? Was it opera?”
“Holy Christ, enough questions!”
“I was only asking!”
“Blo—yeah. It was a bastard opera.”
“What language was it in?”
“Italian.”
“Can you talk Italian?”
“Yeah.”
“For real?”
“What other bloody way is there to know Italian?”
“But, like, fluently?”
“You have to find another hiding place for that thing, I told you,” he says, gesturing at the wurse, clearly trying to change the subject. “People will find it sooner or later.”
“Do you know Italian or not?”
“I know enough to understand an opera. You got any other bast—questions?”
“What was that opera about in the car, then?” she persists.
Alf pulls open the garage door.
“Love. They’re all about love, the whole lot.”
He pronounces the world “love” a little as one would say words like “refrigerator” or “two-inch screw.”
“WERE YOU IN LOVE WITH MY GRANNY THEN?” Elsa yells after him, but he’s already slammed the door.
She stays there, grinning. The wurse does too, she’s almost sure about that. And it’s much more difficult being afraid of shadows and the dark while grinning.
“I think Alf is our friend now,” she whispers.
The wurse looks like it agrees.
“We’re going to need all the friends we can get. Because Granny didn’t tell me what happens in this fairy tale.”
The wurse snuggles up against her.
“I miss Wolfheart,” Elsa whispers into its fur.
Reluctantly, the wurse seems to agree with that too.
20
CLOTHES SHOP
Today’s the day. And it starts with the most terrible night.
Elsa wakes with her mouth wide open but her scream fills her head rather than the room. She roars silently and reaches out with her hand to toss aside the bedclothes, but they’re already on the floor. She walks into the flat—it smells of eggs. George smiles carefully at her from the kitchen. She doesn’t smile back. He looks upset. She doesn’t care.
She has a shower so hot her skin feels as if it’s about to come away from her flesh like clementine peel. Walks out into the flat. Mum left home hours ago. She’s gone to fix everything, because that is what Mum does.
George calls out something behind Elsa, but she neither listens nor answers. She puts on the clothes that Mum has put out for her and crosses the landing, locking the front door behind her. Granny’s flat smells wrong. It smells clean. The towers of packing boxes throw shadows across the entry hall, like monuments to everything that is now absent.