The Fredrik Backman Collection: A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here

by Fredrik Backman

  It’s one of the few things they really row about, Granny and Elsa, because Elsa thinks letters are something more than just a way of sending messages. Something more important.

  Or used to. They used to row about it.

  There’s only one word in the whole letter that Elsa can read. Just one, which has been written in normal letters, tossed down almost haphazardly in the middle of the text. It’s so anonymous that Elsa didn’t notice it the first time she read it. She reads it again and again until she can’t see it through all her blinking. She feels let down and angry for tens of thousands of reasons and probably another ten thousand she hasn’t even thought of yet. Because she knows it’s not a coincidence. Granny put that word right there so Elsa would see it.

  The name on the envelope is the same name as the one on The Monster’s mailbox. And the only word Elsa can read in the letter is “Miamas.”

  Granny has always loved treasure hunts.

  6

  CLEANING AGENTS

  She has three scratch marks on her cheek. As if from claws. She knows they’ll want to know how it all began. Elsa ran, is the short answer. She’s good at running. That’s what happens when you get chased all the time.

  This morning she lied to Mum about starting school an hour earlier than usual. And when Mum pulled her up on it, Elsa played the bad mother card. The bad mother card is like Renault: hardly a beauty but surprisingly effective. “I’ve told you like a hundred times I start earlier on Mondays! I even gave you a slip but you never listen to me anymore!”

  Mum mumbled something about “pregnant airhead” and looked guilty. The easiest way of getting her off balance is if you can manage to persuade her she’s lost control. There used to be just two people in the world who knew how to make Mum lose control. And now there’s only one. That’s a lot of power to put into the hands of someone who’s not even eight yet.

  At lunchtime, Elsa took the bus home, because she figured she had a better chance of dodging Britt-Marie during the day. She stopped and bought four bags of Daim in the supermarket. The house was as dark and silent as only Granny’s house could be without the presence of Granny, and it felt as if even the house were missing her. Elsa hid carefully from Britt-Marie, who was on her way to the space where the trash bins are kept, although she didn’t even have any bags of separated rubbish. After Britt-Marie had checked the contents of all the bins and pursed her mouth the way she does when she decides to raise some issue at the next residents’ meeting, she set off down the street to the supermarket so she could walk about and purse her mouth in there for a while. Elsa sneaked in and went up the stairs to the mezzanine floor. There she stood, shaking with fear and anger outside the flat, still with the letter in her hand. Her anger was reserved for Granny. Her fear was of The Monster.

  Not long after, she was running through the playground so fast she thought her feet were on fire. And now she sits in a small room with luminous red marks on her cheek as if from claws, waiting for Mum and fully aware that she’ll demand to know what’s happened.

  She spins the globe at one end of the desk. The headmaster looks particularly vexed when she does it. So she keeps doing it.

  “Well?” the headmaster asks, pointing at her cheek, “Are you ready to tell me what happened?”

  She doesn’t even grace him with an answer.

  It was smart of Granny, Elsa has to admit it. She’s still insanely irritated about this stupid treasure hunt, but it was smart of Granny to write “Miamas” in normal characters in the letter. Because Elsa had stood there earlier on the landing, summoning her courage for at least a hundred eternities before she rang the doorbell. And if Granny hadn’t known that Elsa would read the letter even though one mustn’t read other people’s letters, and if she hadn’t written “Miamas” in normal characters, Elsa would just have thrown the envelope in The Monster’s mail slot and run away. Instead, she stood there ringing the doorbell, because she had to press The Monster for some answers.

  Because Miamas belongs to Granny and Elsa. It’s only theirs. Elsa’s fury at the thought of Granny bringing along some random muppet was bigger than any fear she might have of monsters.

  Okay, not much bigger than her monster fear, but big enough.

  Our Friend was still howling in the flat next door, but nothing happened when she rang at The Monster’s door. She rang again and banged on the door until the wood was creaking and then peered inside through the mail slot, but it was too dark to see anything. Not a movement. Not a breath. All she could feel was an acrid smell of cleaning agents, the sort of smell that rushes up your nasal membranes and starts kicking the back of your eyeballs when you breathe it in.

  But no sign of a monster. Not even a little one.

  Elsa took off her backpack and got out the four bags of Daim and emptied them through Our Friend’s mail slot. For a few brief, brief moments the creature stopped howling in there. Elsa has decided to call it “the creature” until she has figured out what it really is, because, irrespective of what Britt-Marie says, Elsa is pretty damn sure that this is no mere dog.

  “You have to stop howling; Britt-Marie will call the police and they’ll come here and kill you,” she whispered through the slot.

  She didn’t know if the creature understood. But at least it was being quiet and eating its Daim. As any rational creature does, when offered Daim.

  “If you see The Monster, tell him I have mail for him,” said Elsa.

  The creature didn’t answer, but Elsa felt its warm breath when it sniffed at the door.

  “Tell him my granny sends her regards and says she is sorry,” she whispered.

  And then she put the letter in her backpack and took the bus back to school. And when she looked out of the bus window she thought she saw him again. The thin man who’d been standing outside the undertaker’s yesterday while Mum was talking to the whale-woman. Now he was in the shadows on the other side of the street. She couldn’t see his face behind the cigarette smoke, but a cold, instinctual terror wrapped itself around her ribs.

  And then he was gone.

  Elsa reckons this may have been why she couldn’t make herself invisible when she got to school. Invisibility is the sort of superpower you can train yourself to have, and Elsa practices it all the time, but it doesn’t work if you are angry or frightened. When she got to school Elsa was both. Afraid of men turning up in the shadows without her knowing why, and angry at Granny for sending a letter to a monster, and both angry at and afraid of monsters. Normal monsters have the decency to live deep inside black caves or at the bottoms of ice-cold lakes. Normal, terrifying monsters don’t actually live in flats and get their mail delivered.

  And anyway Elsa hates Monday. School is always at its worst on Monday mornings, because people who like chasing you have had to hang about all weekend with no one to chase. The notes in her locker are always the worst on Mondays. Which could also be why the invisibility thing is not working.

  Elsa starts fidgeting with the headmaster’s globe again. Then she hears the door opening behind her and the headmaster stands up, looking relieved.

  “Hello! Sorry I’m so late! It’s the traffic!” Elsa’s mum pants, out of breath, and Elsa feels her fingers brushing her neck.

  Elsa doesn’t turn around. She also feels Mum’s telephone brushing against her neck, because Mum always carries it. As if she were a cyborg and it was a part of her organic tissue.

  Elsa fingers the globe a little more demonstratively. The headmaster sits down in his chair, then leans forward and discreetly tries to move the globe out of her reach. He turns hopefully to Mum.

  “Shall we wait for Elsa’s father, perhaps?”

  The headmaster prefers Dad to be present at these types of meetings, because he seems to find dads easier to reason with when it comes to this sort of thing. Mum doesn’t look especially pleased.

  “Elsa’s father is away and unfortunately he won’t be back until tomorrow.” The headmaster looks disappointed.

 
“Of course, there’s no intention on our part to create a sense of panic here. Especially not in your condition. . . .”

  He nods at Mum’s belly. Mum looks like she needs to control herself quite a lot not to ask exactly what he’s driving at. The headmaster clears his throat and pulls the globe even farther from Elsa’s reaching fingers. He looks as if he’s going to impress on Mum that she should think of the child, which is what people try to impress on Mum when they’re nervous that she may get angry.

  “Think about the child.” They used to mean Elsa when they said that. But now they mean Halfie.

  Elsa straightens her leg and kicks the wastepaper basket. She can hear the headmaster and Mum talking, but she doesn’t listen. Deep inside, she’s hoping Granny will come storming in at any moment with her fists raised, like in a boxing match in an old film. The last time Elsa was called in to see the headmaster, he only called Mum and Dad, but Granny came along all the same. Granny was not the sort of person you had to call.

  Elsa had sat there spinning the headmaster’s globe on that occasion too. The boy who’d given her a black eye had been there with his parents. The headmaster had turned to Elsa’s father and said: “There’s an element of a typical boyish prank about this. . . .” And then he had to devote quite a long time to explaining to Granny what a typical girlish prank might be, because Granny really wanted to know.

  The headmaster had tried to calm Granny by telling the boy who’d given Elsa the black eye that “only cowards hit girls,” but Granny was not the least bit calmed by that.

  “It’s not bloody cowardly to hit girls!” she had roared at the headmaster. “This kid isn’t a little asswipe for hitting a girl, he’s an asswipe for hitting anyone!” And then the boy’s father got upset and started being rude to Granny for calling his son an asswipe, and then Granny had replied that she was going to teach Elsa how to “kick boys in the fuse box” and then they’d see “how much bloody fun it is fighting with girls!” And then the headmaster had asked everyone to compose themselves a little. And then they all tried that for a bit. But then the headmaster wanted the boy and Elsa to shake hands and apologize to each other, and then Granny sprang out of her chair asking, “Why the hell should Elsa apologize?” The headmaster said that Elsa must take her share of the guilt because she had “provoked” the boy and one had to understand that the boy had experienced difficulties in “controlling himself.” And that was when Granny had tried to throw the globe at the headmaster, but Mum managed to catch hold of Granny’s arm at the very last moment, so that the globe ended up hitting the headmaster’s computer instead and smashing the screen. “I WAS PROVOKED!” Granny had roared at the headmaster while Mum tried to drag her into the corridor, “I COULDN’T CONTROL MYSELF!”

  That’s why Elsa always tears up the notes she gets in her locker. The notes about how she is ugly. That she’s disgusting. That they’re going to kill her. Elsa rips them into such tiny pieces that they can hardly be seen and then throws them into different wastepaper bins all over the school. It’s an act of mercy to those who wrote the notes, because Granny would have beaten them to death if she’d found out.

  Elsa rises slightly from the chair and quickly reaches across the desk to give the globe another spin. The headmaster looks close to despair. Elsa sinks back into her chair, satisfied.

  “My God, Elsa! What happened to your cheek!” Mum bursts out with exclamation marks at the end, when she sees the three red lacerations.

  Elsa shrugs without answering. Mum turns to the headmaster. Her eyes are burning.

  “What happened to her cheek?!”

  The headmaster twists in his seat.

  “Now, then. Let’s calm ourselves down, now. Think about . . . I mean, think about your child.”

  He isn’t pointing at Elsa when he says that last bit, he’s pointing at Mum. Elsa stretches her leg and kicks the wastepaper bin again. Mum takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, then determinedly moves the wastebasket farther under the desk. Elsa looks at her, offended, sinks so deep into the chair that she has to hold on to the armrests to stop herself sliding out, and reaches out with her leg until her toe almost, almost, touches the rim of the wastebasket. Mum sighs. Elsa sighs even louder. The headmaster looks at them and then at the globe on his desk. He pulls it closer to him.

  “So . . .” he begins at last, smiling halfheartedly at Mum.

  “It’s been a difficult week for the whole family,” Mum interrupts him at once and sounds as if she’s trying to apologize.

  Elsa hates it.

  “We can all empathize with that,” says the headmaster in the manner of someone who doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He looks nervously at the globe. “Unfortunately it’s not the first time Elsa has found herself in conflict at this school.”

  “Not the last either,” Elsa mutters.

  “Elsa!” snaps Mum.

  “Mum!!!” Elsa roars with three exclamation marks.

  Mum sighs. Elsa sighs even louder. The headmaster clears his throat and holds the globe with both hands as he says:

  “We, and by that I mean the staff at this school, obviously in collaboration with the guidance counselor, feel that Elsa could be helped by a psychologist to channel her aggressions.”

  “A psychologist?” says Mum hesitantly, “Surely that’s a bit dramatic?”

  The headmaster raises his hands defensively as if apologizing, or possibly as if he’s about to start playing an air tambourine.

  “It’s not that we think anything is wrong! Absolutely not! Lots of special-needs children benefit from therapy. It’s nothing to be ashamed of!”

  Elsa reaches out with the tips of her toes and pushes over the wastepaper basket. “Why don’t you go to a psychologist yourself?”

  The headmaster decides to make the globe safe by putting it on the floor next to his chair. Mum leans towards Elsa and exerts herself incredibly not to raise her voice.

  “If you tell me and the headmaster which of the children are causing you trouble, we can help you solve the conflicts instead of things always ending up like this, darling.”

  Elsa looks up, her lips pressed into a straight line.

  The scratch marks on her cheek have stopped bleeding but they are still as bright as neon lights.

  “Snitches get stitches,” she says succinctly.

  “Elsa, please try to cooperate,” the headmaster says, attempting a grimace that Elsa assumes to be his way of smiling a little.

  “You be cooperative,” Elsa replies without an attempt to smile even a little.

  The headmaster looks at Mum.

  “We, well, I mean the school staff and I, believe that if Elsa could just try to walk away sometimes when she feels there’s a conflict about to happ—”

  Elsa doesn’t wait for Mum’s answer, because she knows Mum won’t defend her. So she snatches up her backpack from the floor and stands up.

  “Can we go now, or what?”

  And then the headmaster says she can go into the corridor. He sounds relieved. Elsa marches out, while Mum stays in there, apologizing. Elsa hates it. She just wants to go home so it won’t be Monday anymore.

  During the last lesson before lunch, one of their smarmy teachers told them their assignment over the Christmas holiday would be to prepare a talk on the theme of A Literary Hero I Look Up To. And they were to dress up as their hero and talk about the hero in the first person singular. Everyone had to put up their hands and choose a hero. Elsa was going to go for Harry Potter, but someone else got him first. So when her turn came she said Spider-Man. And then one of the boys behind her got annoyed because he was going for that. And then there was an argument. “You can’t take Spider-Man!” shouted the boy. And Elsa said, “Pity, because I just did!” And then the boy said, “It’s a pity for YOU, yeah!” And then Elsa snorted in English. “Sure!” Because that is Elsa’s favorite word in English. And then the boy shouted that Elsa couldn’t be Spider-Man because “only boys can be Spider-Man!” And then Elsa told
him he could be Spider-Man’s girlfriend. And then he pushed Elsa into a radiator. And then Elsa hit him with a book.

  Elsa still thinks he should thank her for it, because that’s probably the nearest that boy ever got to a book. But then the teacher came running and put a stop to it all and said that no one could be Spider-Man because Spider-Man only existed in films and so he wasn’t a “literary character.” And then Elsa got possibly a bit disproportionally worked up and asked the teacher if he’d heard of something called Marvel Comics, but the teacher hadn’t. “AND THEY LET YOU TEACH CHILDREN?!” Then Elsa had to sit for ages after the class “having a chat” with the teacher, which was just a lot of teacher-babbling.

  The boy and a few others were waiting for her when she came out. So she tightened the straps of her backpack until they hugged her tight like a little koala hanging on to her back, and then she ran.

  Like many children who are different, she’s good at running. She heard one of the boys roar, “Get her!” and the clattering of footsteps behind her across the icy asphalt. She heard their excited panting. She ran so fast that her knees were hitting her rib cage, and if it hadn’t been for her backpack she would have made it over the fence and into the street, and then they would never have caught up with her. But one of the boys got a grip on her backpack. And of course she could have wriggled out of it and got away.