Coraline shook her head. "Why don't you play with me?" she asked.

"Busy," he said. "Working," he added. He still hadn't turned around to look at her. "Why don't you go and bother Miss Spink and Miss Forcible?"

Coraline put on her coat and pulled up her hood and went out of the house. She went down the steps. She rang the door of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's flat. Coraline could hear a frenzied woofing as the Scottie dogs ran out into the hall. After a while Miss Spink opened the door.

"Oh, it's you, Caroline," she said. "Angus, Hamish, Bruce, down now, lovies. It's only Caroline. Come in, dear. Would you like a cup of tea?"

The flat smelt of furniture polish and dogs.

"Yes, please," said Coraline. Miss Spink led her into a dusty little room, which she called the parlour. On the walls were black and white photographs of pretty women, and theatre programmes in frames. Miss Forcible was sitting in one of the armchairs, knitting hard.

Miss Spink poured Coraline a cup of tea in a little pink bone-china cup with a saucer, and gave 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 agreed," 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.

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. Where on earth were you?"

"I was kidnapped by aliens," said Coraline. "They came down from outer space with ray guns, but I fooled them by wearing a wig and laughing in a foreign accent, and I escaped."

"Yes, dear. Now, I think you could do with some more hairclips, don't you?"

"No."

"Well, let's say half a dozen, to be on the safe side," said her mother.

Coraline didn't say anything.

In the car on the way back home, Coraline said, "What's in the empty flat?"

"I don't know. Nothing, I expect. It probably looks like our flat before we moved in. Empty rooms."

"Do you think you could get into it from our flat?"

"Not unless you can walk through bricks, dear."

"Oh."

They got home around lunchtime. The sun was shining, although the day was cold. Coraline's mother looked in the fridge, and found a sad little tomato and a piece of cheese with green stuff growing on it. There was only a crust in the bread bin.

"I'd better dash down to the shops and get some fishfingers or something," said her mother. "Do you want to come?"

"No," said Coraline.

"Suit yourself," said her mother, and left. Then she came back and got her purse and car keys and went out again.

Coraline was bored.

She flipped through a book her mother was reading about native people in a distant country; how every day they would take pieces of white silk and draw on them in wax, then dip the silks in dye, then draw on them more in wax and dye them some more, then boil the wax out in hot water, and then, finally, throw the now-beautiful cloths on a fire and burn them to ashes.

It seemed particularly pointless to Coraline, but she hoped that the people enjoyed it.

She was still bored, and her mother wasn't yet home.

Coraline got a chair and pushed it over to the kitchen door. She climbed on to the chair, and reached up. She clambered down, and got a broom from the broom cupboard. She climbed back on the chair again, and reached up with the broom.

Chink.

She climbed down from the chair and picked up the keys. She smiled triumphantly. Then she leaned the broom against the wall and went into the drawing room.

The family did not use the drawing room. They had inherited the furniture from Coraline's grandmother, along with a wooden coffee table, a side table, a heavy glass ashtray and the oil painting of a bowl of fruit. Coraline could never work out why anyone would want to paint a bowl of fruit. Other than that, the room was empty: there were no knick-knacks on the mantelpiece, no statues or clocks; nothing that made it feel comfortable or lived-in.