英语小说网

Perhaps the most curious of all the curious creatures in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, even by Granny's yardstick, are the regretters. They are wild animals living in herds, whose grazing areas are just outside Miamas, where they forage widely, and really nobody knows how they survive, considering the circumstances. At first sight, regretters look more or less like white horses, although they are far more ambivalent and suffer from the biological defect of never being able to make up their minds. This obviously causes certain practical problems, because regretters are flock animals, and one regretter therefore almost always crashes into another when heading off in one direction and then changing its mind. For this reason regretters always have enormous, oblong swellings on their foreheads, which, in various fairy tales from Miamas that have ended up in the real world, has made people consistently get them confused with unicorns. But in Miamas the storytellers learned the hard way not to cut costs by hiring a regretter to do the job of a unicorn, because, whenever they did, the fairy tales had a tendency never to get to the point. And also no one, really no one at all, feels good after standing behind a regretter in the line for the lunch buffet.

Mum is massaging her temples and swearing repeatedly through gritted teeth. She is obviously regretting speeding away from the hospital like that, since the first thing she has to do after dropping Elsa off at school is drive straight back to the hospital so she can go to work. Elsa pats her on the shoulder.

Mum shuts her eyes in resignation. She's had rather too much baby brain lately. So much so that she could not even find Elsa's Gryffindor scarf when they looked for it this morning, and so much so that she keeps putting her telephone in strange places. In the refrigerator and in the trash bin and the laundry basket and on one occasion in George's jogging shoes. This morning Elsa had to call Mum's telephone three times, which is not entirely uncomplicated as the display on Elsa's telephone is quite fuzzy after its encounter with the toaster. But in the end they found Mum's telephone ringing inside Elsa's backpack. The Gryffindor scarf was also there.

"Maybe you can blame it on your baby brain?"

"So there's no point changing your mind, all you get is a headache!" Granny used to say, smacking herself on her forehead. Elsa thinks about that now, sitting in Kia outside school and looking at Mum. She wonders if Granny ever regretted all the times she left Mum. She wonders if Granny's head was full of bumps. She hopes so.

"Darling, I don't think they'll let me be the head of a hospital if I tell them I had a police escort to the emergency entrance"

"You see!" Mum tried to say. "Nothing is really gone until your mum can't find it!" But Elsa rolled her eyes and then Mum looked ashamed of herself and mumbled, "It's my baby brain, I'm afraid."

She looks ashamed of herself now as well. And full of regret.

Elsa reaches out and pats Mum on the cheek. "It'll get better, Mum. It'll be fine."

Granny used to say that, Elsa realizes as soon as she says it. Mum puts her hand on Halfie and nods with fake self-assurance in order to change the subject.

"Your dad will pick you up this afternoon, don't forget. And George will take you to school on Monday. I have a conference then and --"

Mum puts her hand on Elsa's hand and inhales deeply from the point where they are touching, as if trying to fill her lungs with Elsa. As mums do with daughters who grow up too fast.

Elsa patiently gives Mum's head a scratch. "I'm not going to school on Monday, Mum. It's the Christmas holidays."

Even though it does a little.

Mum's phone vibrates in Elsa's hand. She sees Dad's name on the display. And underneath, I UNDERSTAND. Elsa deletes it. And deletes the text she sent to Dad from the outgoing messages. Then stands on the pavement, counting down from twenty. When she's got to seven, Kia screeches back into the parking area and Mum, slightly out of breath, winds down the window. Elsa gives her the phone. Mum mumbles, "It's my baby brain." Elsa kisses her on the cheek.

"Sorry, darling. I… forget."

"It doesn't matter," says Elsa.

They hug each other hard before Elsa hops out of the car. She waits until Kia has disappeared before she opens her backpack and gets out Mum's cell phone, then scrolls to Dad's name in the address book and sends him a text: ACTUALLY: THERE IS NO NEED FOR YOU TO PICK UP ELSA THIS AFTERNOON. I CAN MANAGE IT! Elsa knows this is how they talk about her. She is something that needs to be "picked up" or "sorted." Like doing the laundry. She knows they mean no harm by it, but come on! No seven-year-old who has seen films about the Italian Mafia wants to be "sorted" by her family.

"Nothing is really gone until your daughter can't find it," she whispers into Mum's ear.

"In your right-hand coat pocket," says Elsa.

Mum touches her throat and asks if Elsa has seen her scarf.

Elsa doesn't answer. She just stands there waving as Kia drives off. She couldn't answer because she doesn't want Mum to know that she doesn't want to be a big sister. Doesn't want anyone to know that she is this horrible person who hates her own half sibling, just because Halfie is going to be more loved by them than Elsa. Doesn't want anyone to know she's afraid they'll abandon her.

Mum pulls the scarf out. Takes Elsa's head in her hands and pulls her closer and kisses her forehead very hard. Elsa closes her eyes.

"You're going to be a fantastic big sister," Mum whispers back.

She turns around and looks into the playground. No one has seen her yet. She reaches into her backpack and gets out the letter she found in Renault. She doesn't recognize the address, and Granny was always terrible at giving directions. Elsa isn't even sure this address exists in real life, because quite often when Granny was explaining where things were, she used landmarks that were no longer there. "It's right by where those morons with the budgerigars lived, past the old tennis club down where the old rubber factory or whatever it was used to be," she'd ramble on, and when people didn't get exactly what she was talking about, Granny got so frustrated that she had to smoke two cigarettes one after the other, lighting the second by the embers of the first. And then when someone said she couldn't do that indoors, she got so angry that it was utterly impossible after that to get any decent directions out of her, impossible in fact to get anything except her expletive middle finger.

She looks at the playground again. And at the precise moment when the bell goes and everyone turns away from the street, she runs past the fence towards the bus stop. Gets off a few stops later, runs into the shop, and goes straight to the ice cream counter, then back to the house, where she sneaks into the cellar storage unit and buries her face in the wurse's fur. It's her new favorite place on earth.

First of all she's going to need a computer.

"I've got ice cream in the bag," she says at last when she lifts her head.

Really what Elsa wanted to do was rip the letter into ten thousand pieces and let the wind blow it all away. That was what she had decided last night. Because she was angry at Granny. But now, after Mum has told her the whole story and Elsa has seen all that brokenness in Mum's eyes, she's made the decision not to do that. Elsa is going to deliver the letter, this and all the other letters Granny has left for her. This is going to be a grand adventure and a monstrous fairy tale, just as Granny planned it. But Elsa isn't doing it for Granny's sake.

"I know you're there!" she calls out.

The wurse looks at her like a very big wurse that has just been told to behave like a considerably smaller wurse.

"It's Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk -- my favorite," Elsa elaborates. The wurse has eaten more than half the ice cream before she reaches the end of that sentence. She caresses its ears. "I just have to get hold of a computer. Stay here and… you know… try to stay out of sight!"

Elsa promises to find it a much better hiding place. Soon.

The wurse points its nose with interest.

No one answers. Elsa takes a deep breath.

She runs up the stairs. Checks carefully that Britt-Marie is not lurking anywhere, and once she's sure she's not, rings The Monster's doorbell. He doesn't open. She rings the bell again. Everything is silent. She groans and opens his mail slot and peers inside. All of the lights are out, but that doesn't dissuade her.

"If you don't open, I'll sneeze right inside! And I've got a mega-col --" she starts to say threateningly, before from behind her interrupts a hiss, like someone trying to make a cat jump down from a table.

She spins around. The Monster steps out of the shadows on the stairs. She can't understand how such a huge person can make himself invisible all the time. He's rubbing his hands together, turning the skin around his knuckles red.

"Don't sneeze, don't sneeze," he implores anxiously.

"I need to borrow your computer, because I think George could be at home and I can't surf on my cell phone because the display is screwed because Granny had a Fanta-and-toaster-related incident with it…"

The Monster shakes his head again.

The hood over The Monster's head moves slowly from side to side. "No computer."

"Just let me borrow it so I can check the address!" Elsa whines, waving Granny's letter in the air.

"Fine, just give me your Wi-Fi password, then, so I can connect my iPad!" she manages to say, rolling her eyes until it feels as if her pupils are out of position when she stops. "I don't have 3G on the iPad, because Dad bought the iPad and Mum got pissed because she didn't want me to have such expensive stuff, and she doesn't like Apple, so it was a compromise! It's complicated, okay? I only need to borrow your Wi-Fi, that's all! Good God!"

"No computer," repeats The Monster.

"No… computer?" Elsa repeats with extreme disbelief.

The Monster shakes his head.

"How can you not have a COMPUTER?"

"You don't have a computer?"

The hood moves from side to side. Elsa peers at him as if he's having her on, is clinically insane, or both.

The Monster produces a small sealed plastic bag from one of his jacket pockets, and inside it is a small bottle of alcogel. Carefully he squeezes out some of its contents and starts rubbing it into his palms and skin.

Which doesn't exactly leave a wealth of possibilities. Elsa collects herself and tries to think about how a knight of Miamas is never afraid of a treasure hunt, even if it's difficult. And then she goes up the stairs.

Elsa takes a deep, irritated breath and takes a look around the stairs. George may still be at home so she can't go inside, because then he'll ask why she's not at school. And she can't go to Maud and Lennart, because they're too kind to lie, so if Mum asks if they've seen Elsa they'll tell her the truth. The boy with a syndrome and his mum aren't here in the daytime. And forget Britt-Marie.

"Don't need computer," he growls.

"Were you still sleeping?"

Alf opens the door after the seventh ring. His flat smells of wood shavings. He's wearing a sorry excuse for a dressing gown, and the remaining hairs on his head look like the last tottering bits of buildings after a hurricane. He's holding a large white cup on which it says "Juventus" and there's a smell of coffee, strong like Granny always drank it. "After Alf has made coffee, you have to drive standing up all morning," she used to say, and Elsa didn't quite know what she meant, although she understood what she was saying.

"You know where this is?" says Elsa, and holds out the envelope with Granny's handwriting on it.

"Yes?" he grunts.

"I drive the late shift. This is nighttime for me. Do I come to your flat in the middle of the night to ask you random questions?"

"Are you waking me up to ask about a bloody address?" answers Alf in every way inhospitably before taking a big gulp of coffee.

Elsa looks at the cup. Looks at Alf.

Alf takes another mouthful and nods at his wristwatch.

Alf looks a little as if he's repeating her question to himself inside his head, in a very exaggerated and contemptuous tone. Has another sip of coffee.

Alf looks resigned. "Young people and their lack of history, I tell you. Where the rubber factory was until they moved it again. And the brickyard."

"What?"

"And?" wonders Elsa.

"I've been a taxi driver for more than thirty years."

"And so of course I bloody know where that is. It's by the old waterworks," he says, then drains his cup.

"If you're asleep, why are you drinking coffee?"

"Do you know where this is or not?" she asks and points at the envelope.

Alf looks at the cup. Looks at Elsa. Looks totally puzzled. Elsa shrugs.

Elsa's expression gives away the possibility that she doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

Alf claws at the remains of his hair and disappears into the flat. Comes back with a topped-up cup of coffee and a map. Puts down the coffee cup with a slam on a shelf in the hall and marks the map with a thick ring using a ballpoint pen.

"I'll keep the map!" Elsa hollers cheerfully into his mail slot.

"Oh, theeere! That's where the shopping center is. Why didn't you just say?"

He doesn't answer.

He doesn't answer that either.

Alf says something that Elsa can't quite make out and closes the door in her face.

"It's the Christmas holidays, if you're wondering! That's why I'm not at school!" she calls out.

The wurse is lying on its side with two legs comfortably stretched up into the air when Elsa walks into the storage unit, as if it has very gravely misunderstood a Pilates exercise. The Monster is standing in the passage outside, rubbing his hands. He looks very uncomfortable.

The Monster nods. The hood glides away a few inches from his face, and the big scar gleams momentarily in the fluorescent light. He doesn't even ask where they're going. It's difficult not to feel a pang of affection for him.

Elsa looks first at him and then at the wurse. She knows that Mum is going to be angry with her for playing hooky and going off without permission, but when Elsa asks her why she's always so worried about her, Mum always says, "Because I'm so bloody afraid something may happen to you." But Elsa is having a pretty hard time thinking that anything can happen to you when you have a monster and a wurse tagging along. So she feels it should be okay, given the circumstances.

Elsa holds up the envelope to him. "Are you coming?"

The Monster holds out the broom like a lance and tries to force the wurse back by pushing the bristles into its nose.

The wurse tries to lick The Monster when it walks out of the storage unit. The Monster jumps in terror and snatches back his hand and grabs a broom leaning up against another storage unit. The wurse, as if it's teasing and having a bit of a laugh, sweeps its tongue back and forth in long, provocative movements.

"I said stop it!" Elsa snaps at both of them.

"Stop i --" Elsa begins but doesn't have time to finish the last "it" before The Monster has thrown both broom and wurse across the cellar with all his might, sending the heavy animal crashing hard into the wall several yards away.

"Stop it!" Elsa tells it.

The wurse closes its jaws around the broom and crunches it to smithereens.

The wurse rolls up and flexes its body in one movement, and is in the middle of a terrifying spring before it has even landed. Its jaws are open, and rows of kitchen knife-size teeth exposed. The Monster faces it with a broad chest and the blood pumping in his fists.

The wurse stops itself midleap and lands softly beside her. The Monster takes a few steps back. Slowly, muscles relax and lungs release air. Neither of them meets her gaze.

"CUT IT OUT, I SAID!" Elsa roars, throwing her little body right between the two furious creatures, unprotected between claws as sharp as spears and fists probably big enough to separate her head from her shoulders. She stands her ground, armed with nothing but the indifference of an almost-eight-year-old to her own physical shortcomings. Which goes a long way.

"The idea here is that you're supposed to protect me," Elsa says in a quieter voice, trying not to cry, which doesn't go so terrifically well. "I've never had any friends and now you two try to kill the only two I've ever had, just after I've found you!"

The wurse lowers its nose. The Monster rubs his hands, disappears into his hood, and makes a rocking motion towards the wurse.

The wurse growls back.

"Started it," The Monster manages to say.

"Stop it!" She tries to sound angry but realizes she mainly just sounds as if she's crying.

"We have an important mission here, so you can't keep messing about. We have to deliver this letter because I think Granny wants to say sorry to someone else. And there are more letters. This is our fairy tale: to deliver every single one of Granny's sorries."

"Sor… ry," he mumbles. The wurse buffets her shoulder. She rests her forehead against its nose.

With her face in the wurse's fur, she inhales deeply and closes her eyes.

The Monster, concerned, moves the palm of his hand up and down along her side, as close as possible without actually touching her.

"We have to do it for my mum's sake. Because I'm hoping that the last sorry will be to her."