Coraline

green and vaguely chemical. Coraline liked it enormously. She wished they had it at home.
    ‘How are your dear mother and father?’ asked Miss Spink.
    ‘Missing,’ said Coraline. ‘I haven’t seen either of them since yesterday. I’m on my own. I think I’ve probably become a single child family.’
    ‘Tell your mother that we found the Glasgow Empire press clippings we were telling her about. She seemed very interested when Miriam mentioned them to her.’
    ‘She’s vanished under mysterious circumstances,’ said Coraline, ‘and I believe my father has as well.’
    ‘I’m afraid we’ll be out all day tomorrow, Caroline lovey,’ said Miss Forcible. ‘We’ll be staying with April’s niece in Royal Tunbridge Wells.’
    They showed Coraline a photographic album, with photographs of Miss Spink’s niece in it, and then Coraline went home.
    She opened her money box and walked down to the supermarket. She bought two large bottles of limeade, a chocolate cake, and a new bag of apples, and went back home and ate them for dinner.
    She cleaned her teeth, and went into her father’s office. She woke up his computer and wrote a story.
     
    CORALINE’S STORY
     
    THERE WAS A GIRL HER NAME WAS APPLE.
    SHE USED TO DANCE A LOT. SHE DANCED
    AND DANCED UNTIL HER FEET TURND INTO SOSSAJES. THE END.
     
    She printed out the story and turned off the computer. Then she drew a picture of the little girl dancing underneath the words on the paper.
    She ran herself a bath with too much bubble bath in it, and the bubbles ran over the side and went all over the floor. She dried herself, and the floor as best she could, and went to bed.
    Coraline woke up in the night. She went into her parents’ bedroom, but the bed was made and empty. The glowing green numbers on the digital clock glowed 3:12 a.m.
    All alone, in the middle of the night, Coraline began to cry. There was no other sound in the empty flat.
    She climbed into her parents’ bed, and, after a while, she went back to sleep.
    Coraline was woken by cold paws batting her face. She opened her eyes. Big green eyes stared back at her. It was the cat.
    ‘Hello,’ said Coraline. ‘How did you get in?’
    The cat didn’t say anything. Coraline got out of bed. She was wearing a long T-shirt and pyjama bottoms. ‘Have you come to tell me something?’
    The cat yawned, which made its eyes flash green.
    ‘Do you know where Mummy and Daddy are?’
    The cat blinked at her slowly.
    ‘Is that a yes?’
    The cat blinked again. Coraline decided that that was indeed a yes. ‘Will you take me to them?’
    The cat stared at her. Then it walked out into the hall. She followed. It walked the length of the corridor and stopped down at the very end, where a full-length mirror hung. The mirror had been, a long time before, the inside of a wardrobe door. It had been hanging there on the wall when they moved in, and, although Coraline’s mother had spoken occasionally of replacing it with something newer, she never had.
    Coraline turned on the light in the hall.
    The mirror showed the corridor behind her; that was only to be expected. But also reflected in the mirror were her parents. They stood awkwardly in the reflection of the hall. They seemed sad and alone. As Coraline watched, they waved to her, slowly, with limp hands. Coraline’s father had his arm around her mother.
    In the mirror Coraline’s mother and father stared at her. Her father opened his mouth and said something, but she could hear nothing at all. Her mother breathed on the inside of the mirror-glass, and quickly, before the fog faded, she wrote:
     

     
    with the tip of her forefinger. The fog on the inside of the mirror faded, and so did her parents, and now the mirror reflected only the corridor, and Coraline, and the cat.
    ‘Where are they?’ Coraline asked the cat. The cat made no reply, but Coraline could imagine its voice, dry as a dead fly on a windowsill in winter, saying, Well, where do you think they are?
    ‘They aren’t going to come back, are they?’ said Coraline. ‘Not under their own steam.’
    The cat blinked at her. Coraline took it as a yes.
    ‘Right,’ said Coraline. ‘Then I suppose there is only one thing left to do.’
    She walked into her father’s study. She sat down at his desk. Then she picked up the telephone, and opened the phone book and called the local police station.
    ‘Police,’ said a gruff male voice.
    ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘My name is Coraline