Coraline

back. Now it was all up to the hand.
    She turned to her dolls.
    ‘Who would like a piece of cherry cake?’ she asked. ‘Jemima? Pinky? Primrose?’ and she served each doll a slice of invisible cake on an invisible plate, chattering happily as she did so.
    From the corner of her eye she saw something bone white scamper from one tree trunk to another, closer and closer. She forced herself not to look at it.
    ‘Jemima!’ said Coraline. ‘What a bad girl you are! You’ve dropped your cake! Now I’ll have to go over and get you a whole new slice!’ And she walked around the tea party until she was on the other side of it to the hand. She pretended to clean up spilled cake and then to get Jemima another piece.
    And then, in a skittering, chittering rush, it came. The hand, running high on its fingertips, scrabbled through the tall grass and up on to a tree stump. It stood there for a moment, like a crab tasting the air, and then it made one triumphant, nail-clacking leap on to the centre of the paper tablecloth.
    Time slowed for Coraline. The white fingers closed around the black key  . . .
    And then the weight and the momentum of the hand sent the plastic dolls’ cups flying, and the paper tablecloth and the key and the other mother’s right hand went tumbling down into the darkness of the well.
    Coraline counted slowly under her breath. She got up to forty before she heard a muffled splash coming from a long way below.
    Someone had once told her that if you look up at the sky from the bottom of a mineshaft, even in the brightest daylight, you see a night sky and stars. Coraline wondered if the hand could see stars from where it was.
    She hauled the heavy planks back on to the well, covering it as carefully as she could. She didn’t want anything to fall in. She didn’t want anything ever to get out. Then she put her dolls and the cups back in the cardboard box she had carried them out in. Something caught her eye while she was doing this, and she straightened up in time to see the black cat stalking towards her, its tail held high and curling at the tip like a question mark. It was the first time she had seen the cat in several days, since they had returned together from the other mother’s place.
    The cat walked over to her and jumped up on to the planks that covered the well. Then, slowly, it winked one eye at her.
    It sprang down into the long grass in front of her and rolled over on to its back, wiggling about ecstatically.
    Coraline scratched and tickled the soft fur on its belly, and the cat purred contentedly. When it had had enough it rolled over on to its front once more and walked back towards the tennis court, like a tiny patch of midnight in the midday sun.
    Coraline went back to the house.
    Mr Bobo was waiting for her in the driveway. He clapped her on the shoulder.
    ‘The mice tell me that all is good,’ he said. ‘They say that you are our saviour, Caroline.’
    ‘It’s Coraline, Mister Bobo,’ said Coraline. ‘Not Caroline. Cor aline.’
    ‘Coraline,’ said Mr Bobo, repeating her name to himself with wonderment and respect. ‘Very good, Coraline. The mice say that I must tell you that as soon as they are ready to perform in public, you will come up to watch them as the first audience of all. They will play tumpty umpty and toodle oodle , and they will dance and do a thousand tricks. That is what they say.’
    ‘I would like that very much,’ said Coraline. ‘When they’re ready.’
    She knocked at Miss Spink and Miss Forcible’s door. Miss Spink let her in and Coraline went into their parlour. She put her box of dolls down on the floor. Then she put her hand into her pocket and pulled out the stone with the hole in it.
    ‘Here you go,’ she said. ‘I don’t need it any more. I’m very grateful. I think it may have saved my life, and saved some other people’s deaths.’
    She gave them both tight hugs, although her arms barely stretched around Miss Spink, and Miss Forcible smelled like the raw garlic she had been cutting. Then Coraline picked up her box of dolls and went out.
    ‘What an extraordinary child,’ said Miss Spink. No one had hugged her like that since she had retired from the theatre.
    That night Coraline lay in bed, all bathed, teeth cleaned, with her eyes open, staring up at the ceiling.
    It was warm enough that, now the hand was gone, she had opened her bedroom window wide. She had insisted to her father that the curtains not be entirely closed.
    Her