A House Without Mirrors

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One: HIDE-AND-SEEK

  Chapter Two: THE GIRL WHO DISAPPEARED

  Chapter Three: SIGNE SPEAKS

  Chapter Four: IN WILMA’S ROOM

  Chapter Five: A PRAYER

  Chapter Six: A NOCTURNAL OUTING

  Chapter Seven: MEMENTO OF A DREAM

  Chapter Eight: A MIRROR FOR WILMA

  Chapter Nine: IN THE CONSERVATORY

  Chapter Ten: WILMA’S JOURNEY

  Chapter Eleven: IN THE LIBRARY

  Chapter Twelve: A MORNING OF LOSS

  Chapter Thirteen: WHERE IS ERLAND?

  Chapter Fourteen: THE MIRROR NEVER LIES

  Chapter Fifteen: A FAREWELL

  Chapter Sixteen: THE SILENCE

  Chapter Seventeen: HENRIETTA’S VOICE

  Chapter Eighteen: THE LAST JOURNEY THROUGH THE MIRROR

  Chapter Nineteen: A KIND OF AN ENDING

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Also Available from Pushkin Press

  Copyright

  “One hundred! Ready or not, here I come!”

  Chapter One

  HIDE-AND-SEEK

  “One hundred! Ready or not, here I come!”

  The echo of my cry bounced around the hall in Henrietta’s house for a moment before dying out. As silence returned I could hear the creaking of the parquet floors upstairs. It was my cousins looking for places to hide.

  We played hide-and-seek nearly every day, but I rarely got to be the seeker. Both Wilma and Erland said that it wouldn’t be fair, as I could find my way around Henrietta’s house so much better than they could. I suppose they were right, as Dad always let me tag along when he was looking after Henrietta, but it’s still not much fun when you hardly ever get to be the seeker.

  And, besides, you’d have expected my cousins to know their way around by then. Wilma and her mum, Dad’s sister Kajsa, had arrived over three weeks before, and Erland and Signe had been here since school broke up. Their dad, Uncle Daniel, worked at the university, so he had the summers off.

  But no one had been at Henrietta’s house as long as me and Dad. Apart from Henrietta herself, of course.

  The afternoon light fell through the stained-glass mosaic in the window up above the stairs and seeped out in pale-coloured stains across the floor in the hall. The floor was black and white, like a chessboard, and sometimes I remembered playing a sort of pretend chess there when I was little. I remembered the feeling very clearly, and I remembered that somebody else was there with me. Henrietta, perhaps, in the days when she could still walk on her own.

  I quickly searched the ground floor. There weren’t that many places to hide, as Henrietta had sold or given away most of her furniture since she’d been living here alone. Dad says that she’d been preparing for death for a long time.

  Many of the rooms were completely empty now; just some junk against the walls, or a cupboard too heavy to be moved. When you’re playing hide-and-seek, that emptiness is good for the seeker and bad for the hiders.

  I slunk through the dining room, the parlours and lounges and the corner room, which was called the Office, and continued towards the conservatory, which was a large, glassed-in room at the back of the house.

  There was no one there, and no one in the kitchen or the pantry either. Not even Signe, my youngest cousin. Signe usually hid close to the kitchen because she was a little afraid of the dark.

  On the great stairs leading up to the first floor and the drawing rooms, I stopped and listened. The creaking had stopped; they had probably all found places to hide. They could be anywhere.

  Dad said that he hardly knew how many rooms there were in Henrietta’s house, but that was just him talking. He knew as well as I did that there were nineteen. Twenty with the conservatory. Ten of the rooms were bedrooms—if you counted the two tiny ones behind the kitchen that used to be the cook’s room and the maid’s room, when Henrietta and my great-grandfather were kids nearly a hundred years ago.

  I had barely started looking through the drawing rooms when I saw somebody standing on the stairs leading up to the second floor. At first I thought it was Erland lurking there in the shadows on the landing with his arms hanging down beside him. But luckily it wasn’t. It was Signe, Erland’s little sister.

  “What’s up, Signe?” I asked. “Can’t you find a place to hide?”

  Signe shook her head. She looked frightened. Both Erland and Uncle Daniel treated Signe as if she were a dimwit, just because she never said anything. She wasn’t. She just didn’t like talking.

  I went up to the landing where Signe was standing and reached out my hand towards her.

  “Come,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

  Signe took my hand and together we climbed the stairs towards the bedrooms. When we reached the dark corridor leading to my room, I could feel Signe’s hand tightening around mine. I squeezed her hand back.

  She could have hidden in my room, or the one Dad sometimes slept in, but I reckoned that the one at the end of the corridor would be a bit more exciting.

  It was a large octagonal room where Henrietta’s English mother used to keep her clothes over a hundred years ago. It was empty now, but there were plenty of wardrobes to hide in.

  “Here, sweetie,” I said, pushing her into the room. “Choose whichever door you want, okay?”

  Signe watched me with her solemn grey eyes while I checked there were no keys left in any of the half-opened wardrobe doors. There weren’t, not even in the middle one, which was locked.

  “Okay, Signe? Just hide in one of the wardrobes, whichever one you like.”

  She was only five, and you had to spell everything out to her. Sometimes you really couldn’t be sure that she’d understood, but this time she actually nodded.

  “Good,” I said, and stroked her hair. “Hide now, and I’ll come and find you in a little while.”

  I didn’t wait to see which wardrobe she entered. That would have been cheating.

  Carrying my shoes in my hand, I sneaked back down the stairs to the drawing rooms again. I knew exactly which steps squeaked and I avoided them carefully.

  The great challenge of being a seeker was finding Wilma. She came up with hiding places you’d never think of. Once she was hiding inside the grand piano in the downstairs parlour, lying on top of the strings with the lid down. Erland was the seeker, and he never found her. When Wilma told us where she had been, Erland blabbed to his dad, Uncle Daniel, and Wilma got a right telling-off.

  Uncle Daniel probably thought that kids shouldn’t play at all, and we were not allowed to call him just Daniel. We had to call him Uncle Daniel, although he was only just a bit older than Dad. It didn’t bother me, though. He really was just like a boring old man.

  The first three drawing rooms closest to the stairs were empty. The large dining room and the nursery too. I went through them rather quickly as it was usually Erland who hid there. I preferred not to find him.

  “Psst.”

  I didn’t even turn my head when I heard the hiss. No one could psst as creepily as Erland. Like a snake with a tiny giggle hiding under the hissing.

  “Erland is tagged,” I said. “On top of the wardrobe.”

  He was already on his way back down when I turned around. Normally Erland got angry when you beat him at something, but this time he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Bravo,” he said, looking at me with that grin that I hated. “Aren’t you the clever one?”

  Erland was only seven, but he was not at all like a child. He walked slowly and talked like a little old man. Just like his dad, come to think of it. Perhaps that’s not all that strange, as Erland and Signe lived alone with U
ncle Daniel. No one ever mentioned their mum, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t dead.

  I walked towards the hall and could hear Erland sneaking after me. He followed me up towards the second floor too.

  “Will you help me find Wilma, then?” I said over my shoulder, hoping he’d say no.

  But Erland didn’t say yes or no. With a few quick steps he overtook me and placed himself in my way at the top of the stairs.

  “Look at this, Thomasine, puke-medicine,” he said, pulling something that looked like false teeth out of his pocket. “Look out so I don’t bite you!”

  He clacked the false teeth like castanets and they grinned at me, unnervingly like a real mouth.

  “Give me a break,” I said. “Where did you get hold of?…”

  I felt a lump in my stomach as I realized.

  They were Henrietta’s dentures. Erland must have crept up and taken them out of the glass on her bedside table when Dad wasn’t looking.

  “Are you crazy? You can’t just steal her teeth!”

  Erland only laughed and skulked off along the corridor—straight into Dad.

  “What’s going on?” Dad said.

  He didn’t sound angry. Not even when he saw the false teeth that Erland didn’t have time to hide. Dad never sounded angry, just sad and tired.

  “Was it you who took them, Erland?” he said. “Henrietta needs them. She can’t eat properly without.”

  Erland stared down at his feet.

  “Somebody else must have nicked them,” he said. “I just found them.”

  The way in which Erland told lies made me furious. He always got that trembling, miserable tone in his voice. As if you were supposed to feel sorry for him.

  “Cut it out, Erland,” I snapped. “Who else would be as mean and dumb and—”

  Dad held up a tired hand, and as always I shut up straight away.

  “That’s enough, Thomasine,” he said. “Could you leave them on the stairs please, Erland? I’ll take them with me when I go back up again.”

  Erland didn’t answer, but he walked towards the attic stairs that led up to the room where Henrietta was lying.

  Erland was actually the only one, except for me and Dad, who ever went up to see Henrietta. Dad did it because he had to, and I did it because I wanted to help him out, but Erland had no real reason for sneaking around up there in the attic room. I think he was hoping that Henrietta would die while he was watching.

  As soon as I was alone I sank down on the top step and let my hair fall over my face. I felt completely empty inside, but I knew I wouldn’t cry. Not this time.

  At times, nearly every day, there were moments when I didn’t know how I would make it through the summer, or even the next hour. I didn’t belong in this silent house. The people who claimed to be my family felt like strangers.

  I hardly recognized Dad any more.

  “Hello? Thomasine? Is anyone seeking, or what?”

  Wilma stood on the landing between the first and second floor, and I calmed down when I saw her, as I always did. If it wasn’t for Wilma I’m not sure I’d have had the energy to stay on.

  I got up and wiped the hair out of my eyes.

  “No, let’s stop,” I said, starting to walk down the stairs towards her. “I can’t be bothered any more.”

  “Fine,” said Wilma. “Anyway, Mum’s here with the pizzas.”

  When I reached her she put her arm around me.

  Wilma was still a bit taller than me, even though I was catching up, and her arm felt good around my shoulders. Kind and warm, almost like Mum’s.

  “Erland is mental,” I said. “Can you believe that he’d taken Henrietta’s false teeth? He was playing with them!”

  Wilma stopped and looked at me.

  “Henrietta has false teeth?” she whispered. “Seriously?”

  At first I couldn’t tell if she was joking, but then I saw that she wasn’t. Quite often it feels as if Wilma is the younger of the two of us.

  “Wilma, she is over a hundred years old,” I said. “Of course she has false teeth.”

  “I met someone,” she said, taking my hand. “We played for a while.”

  Chapter Two

  THE GIRL WHO DISAPPEARED

  We didn’t say anything else as we walked down the stairs to the ground floor, passing through the parlours, lounges, the dining room and into the pantry. I smelt the pizza even before I heard the voices from the kitchen. Up until then I had been quite hungry, but as usual it didn’t last. Before we came to Henrietta’s house I sometimes craved pizza. I didn’t think I’d ever crave pizza again. When it was their turn to make dinner, both Kajsa and Daniel bought pizza one, if not two, evenings each week. Sometimes we ended up having pizza four times a week.

  Erland, who was already sitting at the table, must have come down the back stairs from the second floor. Uncle Daniel was sitting next to him, reading a paper, and Kajsa was standing up, unpacking the pizzas from a paper bag. Kajsa was still wearing her coat, and even from a distance you could see how grumpy she was.

  “Typical, they’re ice-cold again,” she snarled, poking in one of the pizza cartons. “It’s so bloody annoying never getting home while they’re still warm! Surely there’s a pizzeria somewhere closer?”

  Uncle Daniel looked up and scratched the stubble on his chin.

  “Never mind,” he said. “We can eat them cold, can’t we?”

  While Wilma and I sat down, Kajsa walked over to the ancient Husqvarna stove.

  “You can sit there and eat cold pizza if you like,” she said, turning on the oven. “But I’m not going to.”

  Dad came down the back stairs and went straight to the cupboard to measure out Henrietta’s medicine. He hardly lifted his head while he moved through the room. It was as if we weren’t there.

  Kajsa and Dad had the same colour eyes, and before Dad grew a beard there was a certain similarity between him and Uncle Daniel too. But now they were no more alike than strangers sitting beside each other on the bus. You’d never have guessed that they were brothers and sister.

  Suddenly Dad looked up.

  “Where is Signe?”

  Signe. A cold wave of shame and anxiety started at my scalp and ran down my back. No one had told Signe that our game of hide-and-seek was over. Fear prickling my skin, I stood up and walked towards the door.

  “I’ll let her know.”

  Climbing the stairs, I tried to calm down in the way I always do. It was going to be all right. Wilma and I had only been back down in the kitchen for a couple of minutes. There was nothing dangerous on the second floor, and Signe was not lost. As far as she knew, we were still playing the game. There hadn’t even been time for her to get scared.

  I told myself all that, but it didn’t help. The old fear never went away; it just lurked beneath the surface, and anything could arouse it. As soon as I reached the corridor I started calling her.

  “Signe? Signe, sweetie, you can come out now!”

  No answer, and as I stopped in the doorway I could see that the room where I had left her was empty.

  “Signe? Supper is ready.”

  The octagonal room with its narrow wardrobe doors was silent. There was nothing that scared me as much as that heavy, empty silence. I looked behind the boxes and rubbish bags, although I knew no one could be hiding there. Not even skinny little Signe.

  “You can come out now, Signe. You’ve won!”

  I tried to sound cheerful, but that only made things worse. The silence could tell that I was lying, and it twisted my voice into something horrible and evil. My fingers sweaty, I started prying open the wardrobe doors, one after the other. I called Signe’s name into the darkness, and each time silence shouted back at me.

  Finally, the only door remaining was the locked one in the middle. Could she have got in there? No, I had checked, hadn’t I? That wardrobe had been locked and there had been no key in the lock. I knocked anyway.

  “Signe?” I whispered through the keyhole. “Pleas
e, Signe, come out. You’re the winner!”

  A cool breath of wind seeped out of the keyhole and brushed my lips. It felt like a kiss.

  I carried on calling her while I searched all the bedrooms on the second floor, as well as my own room and the one used by Dad. Fear had taken hold of me for so long now that I began to feel numb. Dad says you can’t carry on being really afraid for more than a short period at a time, and he’s right.

  “I’ll have to get Wilma,” I muttered while I walked towards the stairs. “I’ll fetch Wilma, and then we’ll search—”

  “I’m here, Thomasine.”

  The voice behind me brought to mind the angel chimes that Mum used to light on the dinner table at Christmas. I could almost see the little ornament before me: the flames that pushed the wheel with the angels around and around and the silver bells that chimed lightly and delicately.

  But as I turned around it was not an angel standing there. It was Signe.

  “Signe, where have you been?”

  Signe smiled at me as I reached out my hand to her. She seemed completely unharmed.

  “I met someone,” she said, taking my hand. “We played for a while.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant, but I was mainly thinking how strange it was to hear her voice. Of course I’d heard Signe speak before, but not that often, and hardly ever in complete sentences.

  “Okay,” I said. “Great. Shall we go and eat?”

  I thought to myself that my voice sounded hoarse and frightened, but Signe didn’t seem to notice. She simply held her little hand around my finger and skipped down the stairs. She was just the same as ever, or even a bit cheerful in fact, and I started feeling better.

  Nothing had happened. Signe was unharmed and seemed to have enjoyed playing hide-and-seek. I had not been looking after her, but this time everything had been fine.

  Wilma glanced at me.

  Chapter Three

  SIGNE SPEAKS