Читать книгу The 1,000-year-old Boy - Ross Welford, Ross Welford - Страница 12

For a start, we’ve moved house. That’s bad enough. But get this:

1. It’s a smaller house. Much smaller, with hardly any back garden – just a scruffy yard that’s way too small to kick a ball in. Mum has reminded me (more than once) that I’m lucky to live in a house with any outside space at all and, when she says that, I feel guilty, and sorry that I even mentioned it because I know why we’ve moved. Thing is, my friend Mo, who lives in a flat, used to come round to our old house because he had no garden, but now there’s no point, is there?

2. If people come to stay, I will now have to share a room with Libby who’s a pain at the best of times. She’s seven and likes My Little Pony.

3. Inigo Delombra, who’s in my year at school, now lives in my old house. I think he even has my old room. He smirks at me every time I see him, as if to say, ‘You sad loser.’

At least I haven’t had to move school, but, with the way things are going with Spatch and Mo, I might as well have.

Another thing: Mum and Dad are arguing all the time. They’ve always argued – ‘bickering’ they call it – but lately it’s become louder, and they think I don’t notice. It’s money – always money. I don’t know the details. All I know is that they made a ‘bad investment’, and Mum says it was Dad’s fault. Mum now works in a call centre and hates it. I found Libby listening at the top of the stairs the other night.

She said, ‘Are they going to get divorced, Aidan?’

I had to say, ‘No, of course not.’ Her chin wobbled but she didn’t cry. Not in front of me, anyway, which is just as well because it would probably have set me off too.

So with that lot out of the way …

Be honest. If some kid that you’d just met told you he was a thousand years old, what would your reaction be?

You’d laugh, maybe, and say, ‘Yeah, right!’

Or you might ignore him – you know: don’t provoke the nutter, and all that.

You could, I suppose, come back with a zinger, like, ‘And I’m the Queen of Sheba.’

OK, so I’m not big on zingers, but you get the idea.

So when Alfie said to me, ‘Aidan, I am more than one thousand years old,’ obviously I didn’t believe him.

And then I had to because, although it was unbelievable, it was the truth.

But, for it to make sense, I’m going to have to rewind a bit.