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he went back to bed and snuggled down under the cover. What he would most have liked to do was to continue dreaming about the woman who had come towards him on the beach. But he had other New Year’s resolutions to think about. And besides, there was a long day ahead of him. It would be many hours before Samuel came back from the forest.
    He was going to live to be a hundred. Live until at least 2045. If he was going to live that long, he’d have to toughen himself up. But in the world he lived in, there were no giants to fight.
    The only thing was winter: the snow and the cold.
    Yes, winter would be the giant he would challenge and overcome. He would show that he was stronger than the cold.
    And he knew what he was going to do. As soon as he was fit again, he would begin.
    He would start sleeping outdoors.
    There was an old bed in the woodshed at the bottom of the garden. That was what he would use. When Samuel had fallen asleep Joel would take his bedclothes and make up a bed outside the shed. To start with, he would dress in outdoor clothes and boots. But when he’d got used to it and become tough, he would only wear his pajamas.
    He felt a stabbing pain in his stomach at the very thought.
    Sleeping in a bed out there in the snow.
    But he’d made the resolution. The dead had heard him make it. Lars Olson had been a witness to Joel’s New Year’s resolutions. There was no getting away from it.
    He curled up under the blanket. Swallowed. His throat felt rough and jagged. Like a piece of wood he’d sawn up in his woodworking lesson. But at least it didn’t seem to be getting any worse.
    Then he thought about his third resolution. How he was going to devote the coming year to solving the biggest of all the problems he faced. To persuading Samuel to dig his axe deep down into some tree stump or other and leave it there once and for all, to take out his old suitcases and sailor’s kitbag from the wardrobe, and say: The time has come. Now we’re going to the sea. The waves are waiting for us.
    The waves are waiting for us
.
    Joel could feel a surge of hot blood running through him. The waves were waiting for them somewhere in the far distance. But would they wait forever?
    Joel knew that there were only two possibilities. The first was that he do something that brought such disgrace on himself and Samuel that it was impossible for them to stay in this place any longer. That was option number one. They would have to run away.
    The other was that Joel find a way of earning vast amounts of money. So that Samuel no longer needed to chop down lots of trees in order to earn enough money for them to be able to eat.
    But how could he possibly earn as much money as that? He was thirteen years of age. Just a young brat. And young brats didn’t earn any money.
    Even so, he had a few ideas.
    One was to become Sweden’s youngest rock idol. A Snow Elvis.
    Another was to sell trailers. He’d heard all about that. Selling trailers was an excellent way of getting rich quick.
    His train of thought was broken. Something had disturbed him. Then he looked out the window and jumped out of bed.
    It had started snowing again. A mass of snowflakes were cascading down to the ground.

— FIVE —
    Miss Nederström looked at Joel.
    It was the following day. When Joel was feeling fit again.
    But the look she gave him didn’t suggest that she had discovered a secret. She simply asked him if he’d been ill. And he said he had. They had already sung the morning hymn by then. Joel had held his breath when Miss Nederström sat down at the harmonium and started pedaling. If the sound that emerged was not musical notes, he would faint. He grabbed hold of the desk with both hands. As if he’d been in a boat as a big wave was approaching. His classmate Eva-Lisa, the Greyhound, was standing beside him, grinning. But there was no way she could know. She usually grinned at anything slightly different. Joel grabbing tight hold of his desk was enough for