Coraline

her a dry Garibaldi biscuit to go with it.
    Miss Forcible looked at Miss Spink, picked up her knitting, and took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, April. As I was saying: you still have to admit, there’s life in the old dog yet,’ she said.
    ‘Miriam, dear, neither of us is as young as we were.’
    ‘Madame Arcati,’ replied Miss Forcible. ‘The nurse in Romeo . Lady Bracknell. Character parts. They can’t retire you from the stage.’
    ‘Now, Miriam, we ag reed ,’ said Miss Spink.
    Coraline wondered if they’d forgotten she was there. They weren’t making much sense; she decided they were having an argument as old and comfortable as an armchair, the kind of argument that no one ever really wins or loses, but which can go on for ever, if both parties are willing.
    She sipped her tea.
    ‘I’ll read the leaves, if you want,’ said Miss Spink to Coraline.
    ‘Sorry?’ said Coraline.
    ‘The tea leaves, dear. I’ll read your future.’
    Coraline passed Miss Spink her cup. Miss Spink peered short-sightedly at the black tea leaves in the bottom. She pursed her lips.
    ‘You know, Caroline,’ she said after a while, ‘you are in terrible danger.’
    Miss Forcible snorted and put down her knitting. ‘Don’t be silly, April. Stop scaring the girl. Your eyes are going. Pass me that cup, child.’
    Coraline carried the cup over to Miss Forcible. Miss Forcible looked into it carefully, and shook her head, and looked into it again.
    ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘You were right, April. She is in danger.’
    ‘See, Miriam,’ said Miss Spink triumphantly. ‘My eyes are as good as they ever were  . . . ’
    ‘What am I in danger from?’ asked Coraline.
    Misses Spink and Forcible stared at her blankly. ‘It didn’t say,’ said Miss Spink. ‘Tea leaves aren’t reliable for that kind of thing. Not really. They’re good for generalities, but not for specifics.’
    ‘What should I do then?’ asked Coraline, who was slightly alarmed by this.
    ‘Don’t wear green in your dressing room,’ suggested Miss Spink.
    ‘Or mention the Scottish play,’ added Miss Forcible.
    Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she had met made any sense. She sometimes wondered who they thought they were talking to.
    ‘And be very, very careful,’ said Miss Spink. She got up from her armchair and went over to the fireplace. On the mantelpiece was a small jar, and Miss Spink took off the top of the jar and began to pull things out of it. There was a tiny china duck, a thimble, a strange little brass coin, two paperclips, and a stone with a hole in it.
    She passed Coraline the stone with a hole in it.
    ‘What’s it for?’ asked Coraline. The hole went all the way through the middle of the stone. She held it up to the window and looked through it.
    ‘It might help,’ said Miss Spink. ‘They’re good for bad things, sometimes.’
    Coraline put on her coat, said goodbye to Misses Spink and Forcible, and to the dogs, and went outside.
    The mist hung like blindness around the house. She walked slowly to the steps up to her family’s flat, and then stopped and looked around.
    In the mist, it was a ghost-world. In danger? thought Coraline to herself. It sounded exciting. It didn’t sound like a bad thing. Not really.
    Coraline went back up the steps, her fist closed tightly around her new stone.

 
    Her eyes were big black buttons.

Chapter 3
    The next day the sun shone, and Coraline’s mother took her into the nearest large town to buy clothes for school. They dropped her father off at the railway station. He was going into London for the day to see some people.
    Coraline waved him goodbye.
    They went to the department store to buy the school clothes.
    Coraline saw some Day-Glo green gloves she liked a lot. Her mother refused to get them for her, preferring instead to buy white socks, navy-blue school underpants, four grey blouses, and a dark grey skirt.
    ‘But Mum, everybody at school’s got grey blouses and everything. Nobody’s got green gloves. I could be the only one.’
    Her mother ignored her; she was talking to the shop assistant. They were talking about which kind of pullover to get for Coraline, and were agreeing that the best thing to do would be to get one that was embarrassingly large and baggy, in the hope that one day she might grow into it.
    Coraline wandered off, and looked at a display of wellington boots shaped like frogs and ducks and rabbits.
    Then she wandered back.
    ‘Coraline? Oh, there you are.