The Merman Read Online Free PDF Page B

back.
    â€˜I’ll buy you new ones,’ I said. ‘I’ll get a job this summer. And the first thing I’ll do when I get paid is find you a nicer pair.’
    â€˜You serious?’
    A hundred per cent! If you pay extra, you can get the lenses ground so they’re not even half as thick.’
    Robert smiled slightly. Then he grew serious again.
    â€˜Where are you going to get a job?’
    At TorsÃ¥sen. They always need people. You earn twenty-five kronor an hour packing chicken. And if I don’t get a job there, I’ll look for something else. I’ll be sixteen next year. Then I can work anywhere.’
    He chucked a new stone into the water.
    â€˜You can’t just leave me at home with Mum. You can’t move out.’
    â€˜What makes you think I’m going to do that?’
    â€˜You’ll be an adult soon, and then you can do whatever you want.’
    He was on the verge of crying again, but he tried to hide it by turning his face away.
    We sat in silence for a while. The door of the hut opened. Two men stepped out into the sunlight, noticed us, froze and went back into the dark again. The door was shut quickly. They looked like Tommy’s brothers, but I wasn’t sure. Their boat was usually moored on the southern quay, but I couldn’t recall its name. The boats down here all had the same combination of letters, but with different numbers: FG 31 Lyngskär, FG 40 Tuna...
    â€˜If I move out, you can come along.’
    â€˜What if Mum says no?’
    â€˜She won’t even notice anything. And if she does, we’ll go so far away that nobody will find us... ’
    That was a game we’d been carrying on for as long as I could remember. When things were at their worst at home, we would lock ourselves into my room, get under the bed with a torch and then Robert would start asking questions and I would answer. Like a happy story about the future.
    I looked at him as he sat beside me on the quay. He had grown nearly four inches over the summer, but he was still small for his age. He looked so brittle, like he was made of glass or something, and I suddenly remembered him through all his ages up to now. From when I had helped him learn to walk, even though I was just little myself; the years in town and then in Skogstorp, where I had protected him from the other children; how I reassured him, helped him with his homework, tried to cheer him up and make his life as pain-free as possible, given the circumstances. But there is always an ending and a beginning. That’s how it is with every story.
    â€˜We can’t just run away,’ he said now. ‘How would we get by?’
    â€˜We’ll find jobs somewhere.’
    â€˜I’m not even thirteen. You’re not allowed to hire underage children.’
    â€˜We’ll have to make you older.’
    â€˜With a false beard and a fake ID?’
    â€˜Something like that.’
    And where will we live?’
    â€˜In a city, far away from here.’
    â€˜I don’t like cities. I want to live in the countryside.’
    â€˜Then that’s what we’ll do. In a place where nobody knows who we are. Where nobody will find us. Not even Mum or Dad, if – against all the odds – they should decide to look for us. We can make up a whole new history. We can say that we came there with a circus, but it was so badly paid that we ran away. We can make up new names for ourselves.’
    â€˜Will we live in a house or a flat?’
    â€˜We can live in an old farmhouse, like the Professor.’
    â€˜No. I want to live in a new house. And there has to be nice furniture. And a video player and a stereo. Not like the ones we have at home, or like at the Professor’s.’
    â€˜We’ll get all those things.’
    â€˜And new glasses, of course?’
    â€˜That’s the first thing we’ll get.’
    â€˜And nice clothes. No rubbish from the Red Cross or oversized