“Coraline hesitated. She turned back. Her other mother and her other father were walking towards her, holding hands. They were looking at her with their black button eyes.”
“She said, ‘You know that I love you.’
And, despite herself, Coraline nodded. It was true: the other mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold.”
“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.”
“Coraline shook her head. ‘Why don’t you play with me?’ she asked.
‘Busy,’ he said. ‘Working,’ he added. He still hadn’t turned around to look at her.”
″‘We’ll see you soon, though,’ said her other father. ‘When you come back.’
‘Um,’ said Coraline.
‘And then we’ll all be together as one big, happy family,’ said her other mother. ‘For ever and always.‘”
“Coraline was too close to stop, and she felt the other mother’s cold arms enfold her. She stood there, rigid and trembling as the other mother held her tightly.”
″‘Yes, dear. Now, I think you could do with some more hair clips, don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, let’s say half a dozen, to be on the safe side, ‘said her mother.
Coraline didn’t say anything.”
“She crept back into the silent house, past the closed bedroom door inside which the other mother and the other father [...] what? she wondered. Slept? Waited?”
“He had his back to her, but she knew, just on seeing him, that his eyes, when he turned around, would be her father’s kind gray eyes, and she crept over and kissed him on the back of his balding head.”
“Dinner was pizza, and even though it was homemade by her father [...] Coraline ate the entire slice she had been given.
Well, she ate everything except for the pineapple chunks.”
“There was nothing else there in the mirror. Just her, in the corridor.
A hand touched her shoulder, and she looked up. The other mother stared down at Coraline with big black button eyes.”