It’s like a real little room.
My study, actually.
The mirrors from the wardrobe hang in various rooms around the house, and when I stop in front of one of them I can sometimes see that I look older. My eyes are as dark as ever, but I can see a hint of Hetty’s gentle gaze underneath. They look into me saying: wait a while, it will get better.
It’s good to think about, but I don’t have any great desire to grow up, like Wilma does. Life is what it is, and there is no specific day when it starts, is there?
Well, yes. Sometimes there is, actually.
The day we all long for most of all, Dad, Mum and me, is the eighteenth of August. Or at least some time around then, towards the end of the summer. That’s when the baby who’s growing in my mum’s stomach will be born, and I will be a big sister again.
As soon as the baby is old enough I’m going to take it out into the conservatory and we can sit on the bench and see how nicely Dad has fixed the pond, with new tiles, a new water-treatment system and plenty of water lilies. We will sit there, the baby and I, and I will tell the baby about our brother Martin, who disappeared.
I will show the baby the photo albums and talk about all the people who have lived in Henrietta’s house before us. I will point at their faces and speak their names, just as Hetty wrote them down.
And who knows, if the baby wants me to, I may make up stories about all the people who will live here after us. There won’t be any magnificent adventures about princesses and wars and magic, just stories about being born and living and dying. Adventures get no greater than that, I think.
About the Author
MÅRTEN SANDÉN was born in Stockholm in 1962 and spent most of his childhood in the university town of Lund, in southern Sweden. He has been writing, in one way or another, more or less full-time since his early twenties.
Starting out as a professional songwriter for music publishers in Europe and the US, Sandén began writing children’s books in the mid-1990s. The Petrini Detectives, a series of mysteries for Middle Readers, was launched in 1999. Since then, he has written around thirty more children’s books, ranging from picture books to novels for Young Adults. His work has been translated into Danish, German, Russian and English.
Mårten Sandén is a member of The Swedish Academy of Children’s Book Writers and The Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy.
He lives in Stockholm with his wife and daughter.
MOA SCHULMAN has one foot in the world of images and another in text; she studied Literature and Linguistics at Stockholm University, and illustration and graphic design at Konstfack. She designs for print, illustrates for children, and publishes books in her own Dockhaven imprint.
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Copyright
Pushkin Children’s Books
71-75 Shelton Street
London, WC2H 9JQ
A House without Mirrors first published in Swedish as
Ett hus utan speglar by Rabén & Sjögren in 2012
Original text © Rabén & Sjögren, 2012
Translation © Karin Altenberg 2013
First published by Pushkin Children’s Books in 2013
This ebook edition published in 2013
ISBN 9781782690375
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press.
Translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Swedish Arts Council.
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