First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Nicola Skinner 2020

Illustrations copyright © Flavia Sorrentino 2020

Cover illustrations copyright © Flavia Sorrentino 2020

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Nicola Skinner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008295325

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008295349

Version: 2020-03-17

All of this book is dedicated to Ben and Polly. Except for a few chapters towards the end, which are for Meg and Saul.

Poltergeist: a type of ghost or spirit responsible for loud, chaotic and destructive disturbances. A noisy ghost.

From the German poltern (to make sound) and geist (ghost).

Some people think we don’t exist.

They’re wrong.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part 1

1. A Bit Eggy

2. My Birth Story

3. Buzzes

4. Freak Earthquake

5. A Dying Art

6. I Could Have Handled This Better

7. A Bad Batch of Hot Chocolate

8. They May Be Injured

9. Family Photo

10. The Truth

11. Human Flesh is Yuck

12. Not Very Proud of Myself

13. Life’s Tricky When You’re Dead

14. Thieving Gurnards, Ships in the Night

15. Get on Board, Duckie

16. A Manufacturing Snag

17. Legs and Other Problems

18. Later that Evening

Part 2

19. Sometime Later

20. Look Out for Rats

21. Shoes in the Hallway

22. Mysterious Signs, Disturbed Foxes

23. Bats in the Dark

24. Something Fishy This Way Comes

25. Make Yourself at Home

26. You’re Here!

27. Your Information Pack

28. The Calm Before the Storm

29. When They Took the Ropes Away

30. The Boy

31. There’s Only So Much a Dead Girl Can Take

32. The Face in the Doorway

33. ‘Poltergeist’

34. The Chat

35. Did I Get it all Wrong?

36. An Understanding, of Sorts

37. Friendship and Riddles

38. A Lullaby

39. Shining Eyes, Smashing Glass

Part 3

40. Where am I?

41. It’s Where We Live

42. Scanlon’s Secret

43. The Thing in the Woods

44. There are Others

45. People in Cans

46. Crawler Lane

47. The Icing on the Cake

48. Someone at the Door

49. Crawler’s Special Cocktail

50. Will does Some Counting

51. Temptation

52. Switch it on, Switch it off

53. Go and Do Your Thing

54. Wild Success and Dancing Monkeys

55. Birthday Surprise

56. What are We Doing?

57. An Unwanted Present

58. Party Tricks and Birthday Cake

59. Package D

60. Haven’t you Grown, Scanlon?

61. Not Just me, not Just you

62. Like Father, Like Son

63. Defective

64. Scanlon’s Plan

65. Jill the Death Guardian

66. Who am I? Who are you?

67. All This Will Fade Away

68. We Need to Practise our Moves

69. Final Act

70. Curtain Call

71. Let the Light in

72. I’m Ready

Thanks to

Keep Reading …

Books by Nicola Skinner

About the Publisher

WHEN YOU’RE BORN, you’re a baby. That’s something we can all agree on. But you’re not just a baby. No.

You’re a story.

A beautiful, bouncing, gurgling story.

A tale to be treasured.

And not just one story either. You’re all of the stories, all of the time. You’re an adventure, a love story, a thriller, occasionally a horror – yes, I am looking at you, you naughty little scamp – all rolled into one. And every day is story time now you’ve arrived.

Basically, babies are page-turners, and will only get more fascinating with each passing day. Or that’s what their parents think anyway.

Even if no one else does.

Parents love talking about their children, don’t they? Stick around any school gate long enough and all you’ll hear is: ‘my treasure this’ and ‘my darling that’. And what do they love to talk about the most?

Our beginning.

Also known as the Birth.

This part is special.

It is sacred.

It is long.

Have a look around. Go on.

Are there parents nearby? Is their conversation turning towards childbirth? Do any of them have a funny misty-eyed look on their face? Is anyone – this is the clincher – clearing their throat?

If the answer to any of that is yes, then I ask you this. Have you got an escape route? If you have, run to it. Now.

If not, tough luck. Did you have something planned for the day? Not any more you don’t. Because when a parent breaks into a birth story, it takes a while and there’s nowhere to hide.

You will hear:

a. When the contractions started.

b. Which hospital they decided to drive to.

c. What song was on the radio in the car.

d. Whether that glitchy traffic light had been fixed.

Not to mention:

a. How much the parking cost.

b. Whether that was reasonable.

c. What pain relief was available.

d. And how much the baby weighed.

(This last bit captivates them all, for some mysterious reason. Like farmers and their prize-winning turnips, parents are obsessed with how much their babies weigh. Why? Who knows? Ask them, if you don’t mind waving goodbye to another day of your life.)

Anyway, you’d better pay attention. Make sure you listen closely and nod thoughtfully in all the right places, as if you’re having a fantastic time. If you don’t listen hard enough, they’ll somehow know, with that uncanny parental sixth sense, and start all over again from the top. Then it will be YOU asking for pain relief.

For your ears.

And I’ll tell you another thing. For your entire life, how you were born will be used to explain you. Why you are how you are. Parents will say stuff like ‘Oh, it’s no wonder our Jasper is so good at ballroom dancing – after all, he was born on a Tuesday just after I’d had a ham sandwich’ or ‘Well, of course Deidre’s a dawdler – she was born just shy of the M25!’, and all the other parents will nod solemnly like this

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