'I don't think we have one of those,' said her mother. She opened the kitchen drawer that held the napkins and the tablecloths, and she prodded about in it. 'Hold on. Will this do?'
It was a folded-up disposable paper tablecloth covered with red flowers, left over from some picnic they had been on several years before.
'That's perfect,' said Coraline.
'I didn't think you played with your dolls any more,' said Mrs Jones.
'I don't,' admitted Coraline. 'They're protective coloration.'
'Well, be back in time for lunch,' said her mother. 'Have a good time.'
Coraline filled a cardboard box with dolls and several plastic dolls' tea-cups. She filled a jug with water.
Then she went outside. She walked down to the road, just as if she were going to the shops. Before she reached the supermarket she cut over a fence into some wasteland, and along an old drive, then she crawled under a hedge. She had to go under the hedge in two journeys in order not to spill the water from the jug.
It was a long, roundabout looping journey, but at the end of it Coraline was satisfied that she had not been followed.
She came out behind the dilapidated old tennis court. She crossed over it to the meadow where the long grass swayed. She found the planks on the edge of the meadow. They were astonishingly heavy-almost too heavy for a girl to lift, even using all her strength, but she managed. She didn't have any choice. She pulled the planks out of the way, one by one, grunting and sweating with the effort, revealing a deep, round, brick-lined hole in the ground. It smelled of damp and the dark. The bricks were greenish and slippery.
She spread out the tablecloth and laid it carefully over the top of the well. She put a plastic dolls' cup every twenty centimetres or so, at the edge of the well, and she weighed each cup down with water from the jug.
She put a doll in the grass beside each cup, making it look as much like a dolls' tea party as she could. Then she retraced her steps, back under the hedge, along the dusty yellow drive, around the back of the shops, back to her house.
She reached up and took the key from around her neck. She dangled it from the string, as if the key were just something she liked to play with. Then she knocked on the door of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's flat.
Miss Spink opened the door.
'Hello, dear,' she said.
'I don't want to come in,' said Coraline. 'I just wanted to find out how Hamish was doing.'
Miss Spink sighed. 'The vet says that Hamish is a brave little soldier,' she said. 'Luckily, the cut doesn't seem to be infected. We cannot imagine what could have done it. The vet says some animal, he thinks, but has no idea what. Mister Bobo says he thinks it might have been a weasel.'
'Mister Bobo?'
'The man in the top flat. Mister Bobo. Fine old circus family I believe. Romanian or Slovenian or Livonian, or one of those countries. Bless me, I can never remember them any more.'
It had never occurred to Coraline that the crazy old man upstairs actually had a name, she realised. If she'd known his name was Mr Bobo she would have said it every chance she got. How often do you get to say a name like 'Mister Bobo' aloud?
'Oh,' said Coraline to Miss Spink. 'Mister Bobo. Right. Well,' she said, a little louder, 'I'm going to go and play with my dolls now, over by the old tennis court, round the back.'
'That's nice, dear,' said Miss Spink. Then she added, confidentially, 'Make sure you keep an eye out for the old well. Mister Lovat, who was here before your time, said that he thought it might go down for half a mile or more.'
Coraline hoped that the hand had not heard this last remark, and she changed the subject. 'This key?' said Coraline, loudly. 'Oh, it's just some old key from our house. It's part of my game. That's why I'm carrying it around with me on this piece of string. Well, goodbye now.'
'What an extraordinary child,' said Miss Spink to herself as she closed the door.
Coraline ambled across the meadow towards the old tennis court, dangling and swinging the black key on its piece of string as she walked.
Several times she thought she saw something the colour of bone in the undergrowth. It was keeping pace with her, about ten metres away.
She tried to whistle, but nothing happened, so she sang out loud instead, a song her father had made up for her when she was a little baby and which had always made her laugh. It went:
Oh… My twitchy witchy girl I think you are so nice, I give you bowls of porridge And I give you bowls of ice- cream.
I give you lots of kisses, And I give you lots of hugs, But I never give you sandwiches with bugs in.
That was what she sang as she sauntered through the woods, and her voice hardly trembled at all.
The dolls' tea party was where she had left it. She was relieved that it was not a windy day, for everything was still in its place, every water-filled plastic cup weighed down the paper tablecloth as it was meant to. She breathed a sigh of relief.
Now was the hardest part.
'Hello, dolls,' she said brightly. 'It's teatime!'
She walked close to the paper tablecloth. 'I brought the lucky key,' she told the dolls. 'To make sure we have a good picnic.'
And then, as carefully as she could, she leaned over and gently placed the key on the tablecloth. She was still holding on to the string. She held her breath, hoping that the cups of water at the edges of the well would weigh the cloth down, letting it take the weight of the key without collapsing into the well.
The key sat in the middle of the paper picnic cloth. Coraline let go of the string and took a step 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.
