It started to rain, the heavy drops pattering on the roof of Aladdin’s room. The wind was making the boat rock slightly.
‘Why?’ Billie said, wrapping her arms around her knees.
‘She says she can talk to them,’ Aladdin said. ‘She says that many of the dead are very angry, and want to come back to life. But of course they can’t.’
‘So what do they do when they’re angry?’ Simona said.
‘That’s when they start messing with those of us who are still alive.’
Aladdin pondered for a while, then asked: ‘So do you two believe in all that stuff?’
Billie thought about it. What other explanation could there be for the handprint in the dust and the tapping on the window? She couldn’t decide which was worse – a ghost, or a person playing tricks on them.
‘I don’t know what I believe,’ she said. ‘But I do know that something’s not right about the house where I live.’
They sat in silence for a long time, listening to the rain. Billie thought about what Aladdin had said – according to his mother, some of the dead were angry because they were no longer alive. What if there was an angry ghost in their house? How could she and her mum get rid of it?
When the rain stopped, Billie and Simona decided to carry on down to the supermarket to get some shopping for Billie’s mum. Aladdin wanted to go with them. Before getting off the boat and locking up, he slipped into a cupboard in the hallway and emerged carrying a unicycle.
‘Can you ride that?’ Billie asked.
‘Of course I can – it’s a piece of cake,’ Aladdin said.
Billie and Simona watched in fascination as he leaped onto the cycle and shot away. Everything seemed to be so easy for Aladdin, just as it was for Simona.
The supermarket was quite big. Aladdin and Simona messed about by the freezers while Billie collected all the things on the list Mum had given her.
As she was choosing some bananas, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She assumed it was Aladdin or Simona, so she picked up one of the bananas and swung around, holding it in front of her like a gun. ‘Hands up!’ she said.
Behind her stood Ella, the lady from the library.
Billie was so shocked that she dropped the banana. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said automatically.
But Ella didn’t seem to have noticed that she had just been in mortal danger from a banana. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she hissed. ‘Very soon.’
Billie looked over her shoulder, wondering where Aladdin and Simona had got to. ‘Right,’ she said.
‘It’s important,’ the old lady whispered. ‘You and your family could be in great danger. It’s to do with the house.’
Wasn’t that exactly what Aladdin had heard at school – that it was an unlucky house?
‘My name is Ella Bengtsson,’ the old lady said. ‘I live on Snickarhaksvägen in Äspet.’
Äspet was the area on the other side of the harbour, that much Billie knew. But where on earth were Simona and Aladdin? Billie was beginning to feel slightly panicky, standing here on her own with the whispering old lady who smelled so peculiar.
‘Promise you’ll come,’ Ella whispered.
‘I promise,’ Billie said in a small voice.
‘Good,’ the old lady replied.
Then she picked up her basket of groceries and disappeared.
Chapter Ten
Billie and Simona managed to cycle over to Äspet twice to look for Ella before Simona had to go home, but they didn’t find her.
‘You have to carry on looking,’ Simona said as they were saying goodbye at the bus stop. ‘I’ll come over and help you again soon.’
Billie nodded. She felt it was important to find out why someone had crept into their house and written GO AWAY! on an old comic. Someone didn’t like the fact that they had moved in there, and Billie was afraid that next time the person who had left the message would do something much worse.
It was as if everything had changed slightly after Simona’s visit. Dad used to say that it was important to enjoy everyday life, because everyday life came along pretty often. And after three weeks in the house on Sparrisvägen, Billie realized that whether she liked it or not, Mum had created something like a normal, everyday life in their new home. Sometimes it was just the two of them, and sometimes they might have a visitor, but usually they did more or less the same things. Went to the beach, cooked, read, cleaned the house, did some gardening. They no longer talked about what had happened in the house, because if they did, Mum just got cross.
Almost against her will, Billie started to like her room with the sloping ceiling. She put up pictures of Dad and Grandma and Grandpa, and made space on the bookshelves for some of her own books which she had brought from town.
‘I think you’re going to be the first twelve-year-old in Sweden who has her very own library,’ Mum said.
One rainy afternoon, Billie spent some time taking a closer look at her bookcase. She noticed that all the books were arranged in alphabetical order, according to the author’s surname. Billie liked that, and added her own books in the same order. It looked good.
‘Is your house still haunted?’ Simona asked when she and Billie were chatting on the phone that evening.
‘I don’t think so,’ Billie said. ‘I haven’t heard anything, anyway.’
That was why she hadn’t made any further attempt to find Ella, the old lady who wanted to tell her terrible things about the house. Mum had got into the habit of locking the door of the spare room at bedtime, and Billie thought that was a good idea. She made sure she stayed upstairs during the night, and avoided going downstairs if Mum was asleep.
She saw Aladdin often – always in the village, or on the houseboat.
‘Why don’t you ask him round here?’ Mum wanted to know.
Billie thought that was a stupid question. Aladdin was always alone on the boat, so of course it was much more fun to spend time there than at Billie’s house.
But one afternoon Aladdin just turned up. Billie was sitting on the patio reading, and her mum had gone shopping. He looked really funny as he whizzed up the garden path on his unicycle.
‘I thought it was time I saw your house,’ he said. ‘And I thought I might say hi to some of the ghosts.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Billie replied.
‘I see the paint’s flaking off in places,’ Aladdin said as he walked up the steps to the patio.
He pointed to one wall, where scraps of paint had come loose and fallen to the ground. The cracks Billie had noticed on the very first day had multiplied and grown bigger, forming patterns on the walls.
‘I know,’ Billie said. ‘Horrible, isn’t it?’
It only took five minutes to show Aladdin around the house, and then they sat down on the patio with a glass of Mum’s homemade blackcurrant juice.
‘You found that comic in the spare room, didn’t you?’ Aladdin said.
‘Mmm,’ Billie said, staring into her glass.
‘Weird,’ Aladdin said.
It was a hot day, without a breath of wind or a cloud in the sky.
‘Could I have some more juice?’ Aladdin asked.
‘Of course, I’ll go and get some.’
Aladdin got up to go with Billie, but then he caught sight of the squirrel that sometimes played on the patio. Right now it was sitting on the lawn.
‘Oh, how cute!’ he said.
Billie was pleased. At last – something he didn’t have down in the harbour! She went into the kitchen to fetch more juice while Aladdin stayed on the patio, watching the squirrel.
As she passed the doorway of the living room, she stopped. Something was bothering her, but she couldn’t work out what it was. She stood there in silence, a glass of juice in each hand. Her mouth had gone completely dry. What was wrong?
Then she saw it.
The ceiling light was moving, just as it had done on the very first day when Billie was home alone.
Slowly it swung to and fro. As if
someone was hanging from it.
Billie’s heart started pounding again. How could the light be moving when the windows were closed, and there was no wind?
‘Aladdin, can you come here?’ she shouted, turning towards the open door and the patio.
Aladdin must have heard from her voice that she was frightened, because a second later he was by her side. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Look,’ Billie whispered, pointing to the antique ceiling light with one of the glasses she was holding.
The light wasn’t moving at all.
‘But . . .’ Billie began. ‘It was swinging to and fro just now!’
‘Oh, I expect it was just a draught or something,’ Aladdin said.
‘A draught? There’s no wind!’ Billie said.
Then she heard Mum’s voice from the garden.
‘Not a word,’ Billie said quickly to Aladdin.
Why did these things always happen to Billie, and not to Mum?
Aladdin looked confused, but promised to keep quiet.
Billie’s mum was on her way up the steps with a carrier bag in each hand. Billie was still holding the glasses of juice, and Aladdin hurried forward to help Billie’s mum.
‘Oh, thank you!’ she said. ‘You must be Aladdin.’
It was the first time they had met, and Billie could see that her mum liked him. Then she saw something else. A tall man was walking up the steps behind Billie’s mum. He smiled at Billie as if they knew one another.
‘You must be Ebba’s daughter,’ he said.
Mum looked from the man to Billie. ‘This is my friend Josef. I thought he could eat with us this evening.’
Chapter Eleven
It was a strange dinner. Aladdin stayed too. The man called Josef chatted and laughed, but Billie found it difficult to join in. Who was he, and what did he want?
Mum explained that Josef was a police officer who had helped her when someone tried to break into their house in town.
Billie stared at her. ‘Someone tried to break in? Why didn’t you say anything?’
Her mum looked away. ‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve had some problems settling in here, and I didn’t want to make things worse by telling you what had happened back in Kristianstad.’
‘Why have you had problems settling in?’ Josef asked. ‘I think this is a lovely house.’
Billie didn’t answer. She had no desire to talk about the house to someone she didn’t know. Mum looked crossly at her.
‘Well, for a start all the paint is peeling off,’ Billie said eventually.
‘Oh, that’s nothing to worry about,’ Josef said. ‘That’s the way things are with old houses. It’s hard for them to find peace.’
To find peace. No, their house definitely hadn’t found peace.
‘Billie says she hears ghosts at night,’ Mum said.
Josef laughed. ‘Aren’t you a bit old for that kind of thing?’ he said.
Perhaps Billie should have thought before she acted, but she was so angry. She leaped to her feet and heard the chair crash to the ground behind her. ‘You’re just stupid!’ she yelled at her mum. ‘You’re horrible! You don’t think about anyone but yourself!’
She marched towards the house, turning round as she reached the doorway. ‘What do you think Dad would have said if he could see you with a rotten copper?’
Once the words had left her mouth, it was too late. She couldn’t take them back. Why on earth had she said such a thing? Mum looked terribly upset, and Josef dropped his fork.
Billie ran up to her room, thoroughly ashamed of herself. She had barely closed the door before it opened again. Aladdin walked in and shut the door behind him.
‘Do you want to be on your own?’
Billie couldn’t speak. If she opened her mouth, she would burst into tears. She sat down on the floor by the bookcase, and Aladdin sat down beside her.
‘It was silly of your mum to joke about the ghosts,’ he said.
Then the tears came. It was as if she was completely undone by the fact that someone was being nice to her.
‘You don’t believe me either,’ she whispered.
Aladdin hesitated. ‘To be honest, I don’t really know what to think. As I told you, my mum believes in ghosts, but my dad and I don’t.’
‘I never said there were ghosts, I just said that weird, scary things keep happening in this house,’ Billie said crossly, drying her eyes.
Aladdin looked at the bookcase. ‘What lovely old books,’ he said.
‘They were here when we moved in.’
‘What? You mean the previous owners didn’t even take their books with them?’
The surprise in his voice made Billie feel all warm inside. It was so nice to find out that someone else felt the same way she did, and that she wasn’t a crazy person who was just imagining things.
‘They left behind a whole load of stuff,’ she said.
She was about to tell him about the drawings she had moved from the desk when she spotted something that made her go cold.
Her own books were no longer in the bookcase. Someone had removed them and placed them in a pile on the floor. As if they weren’t welcome among the other books. It couldn’t possibly be Mum. She would never dream of touching Billie’s beloved books.
Her finger shook as she pointed at the pile. ‘I didn’t put those there,’ she whispered, suddenly afraid that there might be someone else in the room. ‘Those are my books, and I put them on the shelves along with the old ones. In alphabetical order.’
Aladdin gazed at the books for a long time. ‘So what do you want to do now?’ he asked. ‘Things can’t go on like this.’
Billie drew her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. ‘I just want everything to be all right again,’ she said in a small voice.
‘In that case, we’ll sort it,’ Aladdin said firmly.
‘But how?’
‘Good question. What is it that we want to know?’
Billie thought for a moment. ‘We want to know who was tapping on my window that night. And who made the handprint on the table, then got out the comic and wrote GO AWAY! on it.’
Aladdin nodded as if he agreed. ‘Anything else?’
Billie looked at the bookcase.
‘Your books,’ Aladdin said. ‘Someone is obviously coming into the house without you or your mum realizing.’
‘Exactly,’ Billie said.
She could see that Aladdin was thinking something over.
‘Do we think ghosts could be doing all this?’
On the one hand she didn’t believe in ghosts and evil spirits. On the other hand . . . She couldn’t stop thinking about the ceiling light, swinging to and fro all by itself.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’
‘We need to try and find the family who used to live here,’ Aladdin said. ‘They have to tell us why they moved out so quickly. Bearing in mind all the things they left behind, you could almost believe they were fleeing for their lives.’
Billie shuddered. ‘How are we going to find them?’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we speak to that old lady as well?’
Aladdin’s dark eyes were shining. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said.
Chapter Twelve
‘Where are you going?’ Billie’s mum said as Billie headed for the door with her cycle helmet looped over one arm and her rucksack on her back.
‘Out. I’m meeting Aladdin.’
Her mum came out into the hallway with a tea towel in her hands. ‘We need to talk about what happened yesterday, Billie. At dinner. When you walked out.’
Mum hadn’t mentioned her outburst the previous evening, but had left her in peace.
Billie looked at the floor. ‘Maybe we can talk later.’
Mum nodded, fiddling with the tea towel. ‘Of course. I just want you to know that Josef is nothing more than a friend. A friend. Just as Aladdin is your friend. OK?’
The sadness came from nowhere, fo
rming a solid lump in her throat. Mum gently stroked Billie’s cheek.
‘Say hello to Aladdin from me,’ she said, and went back into the kitchen.
They met in the harbour by Aladdin’s houseboat. Today he had got hold of a proper bike with two wheels.
‘We’ll start with the old lady from the library,’ he said. ‘She lives on Snickarhaksvägen, doesn’t she?’
Billie wondered how Ella would react to Aladdin’s presence, if they actually managed to find her. Hopefully she wouldn’t insist on talking to Billie alone.
And she didn’t. They cycled up and down Snickarhaksvägen twice before Billie spotted her. She was sitting on the veranda of one of the smaller cottages, and was difficult to see from the road. When Billie and Aladdin turned onto her path, Ella practically flew up out of her chair.
‘At last!’ she cried.
Ella’s cottage was full of candles, which she said she lit in the evenings. For some reason she insisted that they should talk indoors.
‘Someone might see us if we sit on the veranda,’ she said quietly.
Billie was very glad that Aladdin was there, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been too happy about going into Ella’s cottage and sitting there with the door shut.
The cottage was so small that it really consisted of only one room, housing a cooking area, a sofa, a bed and a small table.
Ella shuffled two cats off the sofa and invited Billie and Aladdin to sit down, while she sat on a wooden chair on the other side of the coffee table.
‘How long have you been living in the house now?’ she asked.
Billie and Aladdin looked at one another.
‘It’s only Billie who lives in the house,’ Aladdin said. ‘I live on a houseboat in the harbour.’
‘I know exactly who you are,’ Ella said. ‘Your parents own the Turk in the Tower, don’t they?’
Aladdin nodded, wide-eyed, and Billie saw Ella smile for the first time. She had lovely laughter lines around her eyes, and she actually looked really kind.
‘We’ve lived in the house since the beginning of July,’ she said.
She was surprised when she thought about it; was it really so long already? She would be back at school in only a week.
The Glass Children Page 4