Mad Dog Moonlight Read Online Free

memory of arriving withthe cane. But then, if he thought about it, he’d precious little memory of anything else about that day, apart from a journey in a police car and then standing on the doorstep with a policewoman by his side holding Elvis in her arms.
    He could have brought the
ffon
with him, like Aunty said. But his dad’s words
over my dead body
kept ringing in his head. And what if his dad was dead? Ever since arriving at No. 3, Mad Dog had been waiting for his parents to come and get him. But what if they didn’t? What if the
ffon
was all he had left?
    Mad Dog put the walking cane in the back of the wardrobe in his bedroom, where he wouldn’t have to look at it all the time, or feel his past every time he touched it or imagine his parents stooping over it. Better that way, he told himself. Better let them go. Better shut them up. Better close the door on them. Better lock the door, and lose the key and forget the streams he’d played in once, the roads he’d travelled on, the place names, family names, and everything else.
    Better be the boy that Aunty wanted, or else she just might send him away.
    And then where would he go?

3
The Mermaid on the Beach
    Mad Dog calmed down after that. Aunty told herself that he was settling in, but perhaps she knew in her heart that he wasn’t really because, when the social worker started talking about school, she insisted on keeping him at home. No one knew how old he was, she said, and he certainly wasn’t as ready for school as Little Luke next door – her sister’s son who’d recently started in Mrs Heligan’s class.
    So Mad Dog stayed at home, playing in the garden or on the barge den stuck on the grass at the top of the Gap. He loved the barge den from the first time he ever climbed on board. Even with old scraps of moth-eaten carpet and crates for chairs and tables, it felt far more like home than No. 3. He loved the way the barge den rattled when he ran about on it. It almost made him feel as if he was on the open road. Even having to share it with the other Gap children was bearable. But, when he had it to himself and could sit watching the sun on the Rheidol as it flowed through the harbour, he was at his happiest.
    The harbour felt new, with its yachts and pontoons and modern flats on St David’s Quay, but the Rheidol felt old. It came from somewhere in the past, and it was on a journey. Mad Dog would rock for hours in the hammock that Uncle had strung up for him, watching it flowing past and wondering where its journey took it after it reached the sea.
    Sometimes he’d even dream about it, falling asleep in the hammock, lulled by its gentle swaying motion. Back in his bedroom at No. 3, his dreams were often dark and heavy and he’d wake up in a panic. There’d be flames in them, and falling shadows and the sound of howling out there in the night.
    But the dreams Mad Dog had on the barge den were sunshine dreams, full of light and colour. He’d awaken feeling good. There were rivers in his dreams, and breaking blue waves on golden shorelines. One day there was even a mermaid and the dream was so real that Mad Dog was sure it had once happened.
    In the dream, Mad Dog was on a great expanse of beach with a shelf of sand dunes running across the top of it and his parents’ van parked against them, half-buried in long grass. It wasn’t one of those nice, clean beaches that holidaymakers like to sunbathe on, but strewn with pebbles, rock pools and slippery seaweed. Even so, Mad Dog played for hours, trawling through the pools and making towers of shells and stones.
    Finally it got dark and a little wind came up from the ocean and blew into the bay, sending rows of white-topped waves running up the shingle. Mad Dog’s mother called from the van that food was on the table and, on any other occasion, he’d have gone tearing home to eat.
    But, on this occasion, he didn’t go anywhere because