Henry’s Daughter Read Online Free PDF

forty kilometres away, on a posh farm, in a mansion – so Martin says. He’s ironing his shirts and jeans tonight because he’s going out to spend the weekend with her and her parents. He’s never once brought her to this place; she’d run a mile if she saw this madhouse. That’s whathe said to Donny.
    Donny will turn eighteen in June. He’s good with babies and he’s got the bawler quiet but he’s getting impatient to use that iron. He works at the biggest supermarket, which means he has to iron a shirt every day. It’s worth it, though. He gets a discount on food and this house goes through an awful lot of food. He’s half a head taller than Martin, but skinny, and he’s not evennearly good looking, just a blotch of pale skin and freckles, pale eyes, stubby eyelashes and stubby red hair. He’s never had a girlfriend and the way he looks he probably won’t ever get one, like his hair is about half a centimetre long and it shows all the bumps on his head so he looks ridiculous.
    The next three brothers are at high school. They get Henry haircuts and two of them don’t likeit. Greg was fifteen in December, Vinnie will be fourteen in April and Mick turns thirteen in June. Those three must have come out of Mavis like bullets, sort of bang, bang, bang – probably she was getting desperate to have a girl.
    Anyway, it’s pretty easy for people to remember which of the middle-sized brothers is which. Greg has always been Mavis’s pet because he was her Christmas presentand he used to be cute. He’s medium sized with medium dark brown hair and he’s spoilt rotten. However, since he turned fifteen, that spoilt rotten inside him is working its way to the outside, because lately he’s looking pure pimply putrid. He’s a thief and he’d kill you for a stick of chewed-up chewing gum.
    Vinnie you have to feel a bit sorry for. Mavis says he was hiding behind the door whenbrains were handed out, and she could be right. He’s the dead spit of Mavis’s father – curly carrot-red hair, hands and feet twice as big as everyone else’s, and a year ago he started growing into his hands and feet and he hasn’t stopped since. He’s huge for nearly fourteen, like giant huge. Already he’s nearly taller that Donny. He can be pretty rotten; like he’d pinch the last chip off your plate,though he hasn’t got enough brains to be as devious rotten as Greg.
    Mick? Well, some people are rotten and some are beautiful and that’s all there is to it. Mick is pure beautiful, even though he has got a crippled leg. He speaks soft, like Henry, and he’s gentle, like Henry; Mick should have been the girl. He’s even got a beautiful face, sort of freckled but neat sprinkled freckles, not blotchy,and he’s got these gorgeous big blue-grey eyes and one of those mouths that always look as if they are going to say something nice about someone, which is not common in this house.
    Lori is Number Six, like she’s the comma that you put in the halfway mark of a sentence then forget why you put it in there. Probably she only got put in so people could take a breath between reading the names of allthe brothers.
    Thirteen months after Lori, the twins turned up with messed-up hearts. They spent most of their time sick and seeing doctors or living at the hospital, so when they were two Henry did that deal with Aunty Eva, then spent most weekends going backwards and forwards to Melbourne. He was happier then, younger then; he hasn’t been to Melbourne for years now, so everybody has pretty muchforgotten about those twins, except Henry. They’ve sort of become his other family, kept safe from the mess of people he’s made in Willama.
    The next three brothers are Jamesy, Neil and Timmy. They are pretty easy to remember too. Everyone calls Jamesy Gnome Face; he’s always been Gnome Face since he turned up a year and four