The Merman (22 page)

I wondered how long it would take for someone to discover what had happened at the mink farm. The guard dog lying lifeless in the yard. The fence cut open. But I couldn't be bothered worrying about that right now.

It had started to rain. The tyre tracks would soon be gone, as would our footprints. Tommy was shivering next to me on the seat. He was nearly as short as me, and he had to stretch in order to see out through the windscreen. I bet it must look odd, I thought, if anybody is watching us. Two dwarves who'd just climbed out of the ground and were driving off in a pick-up truck in the rain.

F
rom where Tommy and I were standing on the pavement we could see right into the kitchen. What had been planned as a class party seemed to have grown into something much bigger. Costumed figures crowded in among people in ordinary clothes. Some seemed to have come from town. There were bikes and scooters in dense clusters in the drive. The music carried all the way out to the street:
Let's Dance
by David Bowie.

I can't explain why I wanted to go there. Maybe I just wanted to be part of something. I'd borrowed some of Mum's makeup and one of her dresses that had shrunk in the wash. I had my leather boots on, which were a bit too small and had been given to me by an old lady at the charity shop when I was in there looking for clothes for my brother.

But now I was suddenly unsure. Dad had come back home that morning, and something had happened while he was away. He was like a thundercloud. He didn't even say hello to us. Without a word of explanation, he locked himself in the living room. I heard him talking on the phone in there, simultaneously whispering and agitated. Mum took some tablets and stayed in bed all day, and Robert was terrified by the atmosphere and asked me to stay at home. He sounded really desperate when I was about to leave, but for once I didn't listen to him.

‘Maybe we should forget it,' I muttered. ‘Maybe it's not for the likes of us... '

‘Unless you regard it as a field trip.'

Tommy took a step towards the door. I really should have turned on my heel and gone home. But the temptation was too great, the temptation to try to be like everyone else.
Someone had turned the music down by the time we went in, but you could still barely hear yourself think. Some older lads staggered past with carrier bags from the off-licence. A bunch of girls in costume were crowding in front of the hall mirror. I caught a glimpse of Nicke Wester dressed as a vampire, but someone in the room behind him had switched off the light.

In the other direction, in the doorway to the kitchen, it was so crowded you couldn't make out any faces at all, just an anonymous mass of bodies. The smell of perfume and cigarettes hung everywhere.

We squeezed through the hall and went into the dining room. It was quieter there. Sandra and Lilian were standing in a corner smoking. They looked surprised to see us, but they did say hello. A group from Class 9C sat on the floor drinking beer. I felt strange; my stomach had started to hurt in a way I didn't like. I asked Tommy to wait while I went to look for the loo.

The bathroom was next to the staircase leading upstairs. A queue of desperate girls had formed outside it. Caroline Ljungman was one of them. She was holding a pocket mirror up to her face, trying to do her makeup as she waited her turn. When she saw me, she shook her head.

‘Like, I'm not being funny or anything, Petronella... but who invited you?'

She was slurring her words slightly and having trouble getting her mascara brush to meet her eyelashes.

‘Jessica,' I said. ‘Have you seen her?'

‘She's in the kitchen. Totally hysterical. Loads more people have turned up than they invited. Things are about to get out of control here. Mind where you walk – I found some broken glass on the floor earlier.'

I noticed now that she was dressed all in black: black Chinese slippers, black legwarmers over black trousers. A black top with a black brooch on the neckline. Even her nails were painted black.

‘Halloween,' she said, noticing me looking at her. ‘Not that I know what it's about, but it's got something to do with horror. I'm dressed as a witch. Have you got a fag?'

I shook my head.

‘Lovisa's sister was here earlier. She's got her own car, a Golf Cabriolet. She told Lovisa she was going to blab to their parents if she didn't get rid of everyone within an hour. They're away and won't be back until tomorrow. But I don't think anybody's going to leave here willingly.'

We could hear a girl crying in the loo. Someone knocked on the door and asked her to hurry up.

‘Who'd you come here with, by the way?'

‘With Tommy.'

‘Sorry to ask, but you've, like, never hung around with the rest of us, that's all I mean. You've always kept yourself to yourself... sort of off to the side. I realise you haven't had an easy time, with your parents and your brother and stuff.'

The crying continued in the loo. And Carro carried on slurring at me, something about the neighbour's car that had got scratched earlier that evening, something about people who'd come from town when they heard about the party. I wasn't listening too closely.

‘Gerard and that lot aren't here, anyway,' she said suddenly. ‘We should be happy about that. Have you heard about what they did?'

‘Only rumours. About burglaries in houses and stuff'

‘They've been involved with stolen goods as well. And animal cruelty. There was an article about it in the paper yesterday. About all the horrible stuff they've been up to. Stabbing knives into cows' udders. Putting glass in feed troughs. And setting fire to an animal. Can you imagine? They poured petrol over a foal and set fire to her. It was last summer, but it's only just come out now. How can people do something like that?'

She stuffed her mascara into her handbag and took out a powder compact.

‘I'm gonna be happy when school is out so I don't have to see them. What are you going to do when school's over?'

‘I dunno. Find a job, I suppose.'

‘I'm gonna go to England. On a language course. And then sixth form. I hope I get onto the science track, that gives you the most opportunities. You can do whatever you want if you do science.'

I tried to shake off the unpleasant feeling of hearing what Gerard and his gang had done. If it was true, I thought. But why wouldn't it be? It was like everything fitted together in terms of senselessness. The cat last winter, what I'd seen Dad and the others doing at the mink farm, and now the latest news about Gerard.

‘You look really nice,' said Carro, and she seemed to mean it. ‘Is that a new dress?'

‘No, it's my mum's. It shrunk in the wash.'

‘Looks cool, anyway. Is it crepe?'

She reached out her hand and touched the fabric. There was a wart on her middle finger; I'd never noticed it before. It was sort of the perfect match for her witch costume.

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘You know, I can't bear to wait here any longer. There must be a loo upstairs as well.'

Just as I had guessed, there was a toilet upstairs. It was like a little oasis up there. I could barely hear the noise from downstairs, and there was a faint scent of soap and hand cream. I had never seen such a nice bathroom before. Above the basin was a gold-framed mirror. The toilet was pale blue. The sunken bathtub was recessed into the floor. There were lights built into the shelves and half a dozen Jane Hellen shampoos standing in a row in the shower. There were piles of perfectly white fluffy towels on a low marble-topped bench.

I peed and wiped myself without looking at the paper. It was so typical that I'd come on now: I couldn't even trust my own body. I searched through the drawers for sanitary towels but didn't find any. Finally I folded some toilet paper and put it inside my knickers. It occurred to me that Lovisa might have some panty
liners in her room. It felt like I was going to bleed through.

Lovisa's room was at the far end of the hall. At least I assumed it was hers. Everything was painted pink inside, even the bed. There were movie posters and photos of Princess Diana on the walls. In one corner was a makeup table with loads of products I'd never even heard of before.

She even had her own TV It was behind a screen with a small leather sofa in front.

I found some panty liners in the wardrobe, took one out of the pack and went behind the screen to put it in. I could just make out the coast through the window, how the horizon sort of got darker beyond the neighbourhood of detached houses. I wondered what the creature felt like in the old root cellar. What did he think when he heard the wind in the trees up above? Did he understand anything about our world?

At least he was safe now. We'd be going there again soon. We would take care of him and make sure he got better. It was impossible to know how long it would take, but it didn't matter.

I could hear the buzz from downstairs from where I was standing. Voices carried up through the ventilation ducts. A lad's voice attempted to crack a joke: ‘You might have fun without drinking, but it's stupid to take a chance.' And somebody else said: ‘Are you one of those types who sit down to piss?' People were full of those lines – the annoying quips never ran out.

I thought about my brother again. It had been wrong to leave him alone at home. He was properly scared, he wasn't just pretending. I wondered what Dad had got mixed up in. I could detect his moods like a seismograph can detect the slightest movement in the earth's crust. It was something serious at any rate.

When I went back downstairs Tommy was gone. I went into the kitchen to see if he was there, but I couldn't even get through the doorway. I was pushed back with the flow, past people who were bellowing into each other's ears to make themselves heard.

In the lounge downstairs, people had started dancing. One guy with deck shoes and a Young Conservatives lapel badge was DJing. In one corner I could see Petter Bengtsson snogging a girl from Year 7. He had her up against the wall with one knee between her thighs. Just the idea of someone sticking their tongue in my mouth made me feel sick. I imagined them going at it for hours until they got cramp in their tongues and their breath started to feel sour and strange. It seemed so boring, all that pawing of bodies, and the girl who kept pushing his hand away when she thought he'd gone too far.

I went upstairs again, squeezing past the bathroom where the door stood open and someone was crouching down and being sick over the side of the bath, made a wide arc around some lads who seemed involved in an argument and ran straight into Tommy.

‘Where've you been?' he asked worriedly. ‘I've been looking for you.'

‘I've been looking for you, too.'

He took hold of my arm and started to lead me away.

‘Gerard's here... I've just seen him. I put our jackets by the back door. Lovisa's upset. She doesn't want him here.'

I don't know why, but I suddenly felt terrified that he was in the house. We turned left and continued down a hall. Tommy opened a door and suddenly we were in the conservatory. I stopped dead in my tracks. There, sitting in a chair with my jacket on his lap, was Gerard.

I hadn't seen him since the morning he beat up the caretaker. He'd just got a haircut. His hair was spiky on the top of his head, but long at the back. He looked tired, as if he hadn't slept in a long time.

‘I found this jacket on the floor,' he said. ‘Is it okay if I borrow it for a while? It's cold in here.'

‘We were just about to leave,' said Tommy.

‘Isn't the party any good? I haven't had a chance to check out the atmosphere yet. Loads of drinking, of course. People trying to act grown up. I've always thought that was ridiculous.'

He took a soft drink bottle out of his lap. Orange pop.

‘I don't drink alcohol,' he said. ‘Don't like it. Never have done, actually. To be honest, I don't see the point in getting drunk. What good is it if you lose control? If anybody knows about that, it's you, Ironing Board, with your parents.'

‘What do you want from me?' I asked.

‘I dunno. Maybe just to tell you you're no longer a suspect?'

He turned his head to the side and peered out into the garden.

‘Man, they've got a nice place here,' he said. ‘Lovisa's family. Almost looks like Dallas. Like Sue Ellen might turn up at any moment with a drink in her hand. Dentists, is that what they are – her parents? I don't remember.'

He turned to look at me again.

‘The cat was Peder's, but maybe you already worked that out? Or more accurately, his little sister's. She was really sad when it disappeared. Despondent, in fact. Peder says he didn't tell anyone what we did, but that was where everything started, it was like a path leading on to loads of other stuff. And then, after that business with the caretaker, it was Peder who suggested I should hide out in the summer cottage. We'd been in there before. It belongs to some mates of his parents, from Borås. A little shack down by the beach at Stafsinge. They're hardly ever there, only for a week in the summer. There are no neighbours, the place is completely deserted, and yet the police found me after two days. You've got to wonder how that happened.'

It was like he was recounting the plot of a book, but couldn't really remember the order things had happened in. Maybe he noticed that himself, because he sort of pulled himself together.

‘Besides, Peder is the only one who emerged from this situation unscathed. All he's gonna get is a little fine. Whereas I am getting sent away next term. And all the stuff that came up in questioning, even though he swears he didn't squeal to anybody. Don't you think that seems odd, Ironing Board?'

I didn't want to know any more details. I didn't want to get involved in anything else that had anything to do with Gerard.

‘Why aren't you telling him this? That you've figured out it's him.'