Read My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry for Free Online

room, his jacket flapping like a mantle around him, and yelling, “Ja, Klaus! Ja! We will dizcuzz it at ze meeting in Frankfurt!” into his telephone. Alf looks up from his evening newspaper and taps his wristwatch and mutters, “Hope we didn’t cause you any inconvenience by being here on time.” Kent ignores him and instead claps his hands excitedly towards Lennart and Maud and says, with a grin, “Shall we kick things off, then? Eh? It’s not like we’re getting any babies made here, are we?” And then he turns quickly to Mum and points at her belly and laughs: “At least no more than we’ve already got!” And when Mum doesn’t immediately laugh, Kent points at her belly again and repeats, “At least no more than we’ve already got!” in a louder voice, as if his levels weren’t quite right the first time.
    Maud brings in cookies. Mum serves coffee. Kent takes a gulp, pauses, and announces that it’s rather strong. Alf sweeps down the whole cup in one go and mutters, “Just right!” Britt-Marie takes a tiny, tiny mouthful and rests the cup in the palm of her hand before offering her verdict: “I do think it’s a little strong, personally.” Then she throws a furtive glance at Mum and adds, “And you’re drinking coffee, Ulrika, even though you’re pregnant.” And before Mum has time to answer, Britt-Marie immediately excuses herself: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, obviously. Obviously not!”
    And then Kent declares the meeting open and then everyone argues for two hours about what they argued about at the last meeting. Which is when Elsa sneaks out without anyone noticing.
    She tiptoes up the stairs to the mezzanine floor. She peers at the door to The Monster’s flat, but calms herself with the thought that there is still daylight outside. The Monster never goes outside while it’s still light.
    Then she looks at the door of the flat next to The Monster’s, the one without a name on the mail slot. That is where Our Friend lives. Elsa stands a few feet from it, holding her breath because she’s afraid it will smash the door and come charging out of the splintered remains and try to close its jaws around her throat if it hears her coming too close. Only Granny calls it Our Friend; everyone else says “the hound.” Especially Britt-Marie. Elsa doesn’t know how much fight there is in it, but either way she’s never seen such a big dog in her life. When you hear it barking from behind the door it’s like being whacked in the stomach by a medicine ball.
    But she has only seen it once, in Granny’s flat, a few days before Granny got taken ill. She couldn’t have imagined feeling more afraid, even if facing a shadow eye-to-eye in the Land-of-Almost-Awake.
    It was a Saturday and Granny and Elsa were going to an exhibition about dinosaurs. That was the morning Mum put the Gryffindor scarf in the wash without asking and made Elsa take another scarf—a vomit-green one. Mum knows Elsa hates green. She really lacks empathy sometimes, that woman.
    Our Friend had been lying on Granny’s bed, like a sphinx outside a pyramid. Elsa stood transfixed in the hall, staring at that gigantic black head and the terrifying, depthless eyes. Granny had come out of the kitchen and was putting on her coat as if it were the most natural thing in the whole universe to have the biggest thing ever lying on her bed.
    “What is . . . that thing?” Elsa had whispered. Granny carried on rolling her cigarette and replied indifferently: “That’s Our Friend. It won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt it.”
    Easy for her to say, Elsa thought—how was she supposed to know what would provoke one of those? Once, one of the girls at school had hit her because she had “an ugly scarf.” That was apparently all Elsa had done to her, and she got hit for it.
    And so Elsa stood there, her usual scarf in the wash and in its place an ugly scarf chosen by her mother, worrying that vomit-green might provoke the