The light that came through the picture window was daylight, real golden late-afternoon daylight,

Coraline knew that when grown-ups told you something wouldn’t hurt it almost always did. She shook her head.

The other mother could not create. She could only transform, and twist, and change.

She stopped talking. ‘There’s a but, isn’t there?’ said Coraline. ‘I can feel it. Like a rain cloud.’

‘What if it was dinnertime?’ asked Coraline. ‘Wouldn’t you want to be called then?’ ‘Of course,’ said the cat. ‘But a simple cry of ‘Dinner!’ would do nicely. See? No need for names.’

The pale figures pulsed faintly; she could imagine that they were nothing more than afterimages, like the glow left by a bright light in your eyes, after the lights go out.

I think it may have saved my life, and saved some other people’s deaths.’

‘There is nothing down here,’ said the pale thing, indistinctly. ‘Nothing but dust and damp and forgetting.’

She hoped that what she had just seen was not real, but she was not as certain as she sounded. There was a tiny doubt inside her, like a maggot in an apple core.