‘Hey, I bought a decoration for the door!’ Krista cried. She took a beribboned, white-wicker door decoration out of her bag, which bore the words Home Sweet Home.

‘I thought this might calm you down whenever you started worrying about mould or water damage.’ Krista laughed, planting a kiss on Dad’s cheek. Krista dared to laugh at Dad over all sorts of weird things.

Grown-ups are always asking what things feel like. But what answer can you give? This feels strange. When we came to Sawdust House for the first time to clean up and Dad asked me to get a bucket from the cleaning cupboard, I didn’t even know where such a cupboard might be.

But on the other hand, as I stood there in the hall looking for the cleaning cupboard, I suddenly remembered clearly what our home smelled like when we came back from holiday. You don’t smell home if you’re there every day. But if you’re away for a week, home acquires its own smell.

This is what I smelled like when I was little.

Perhaps houses and their inhabitants have that sort of connection: the house smells of its occupants and the occupants smell of their house. We exchanged smells when we moved to Extra Great Manor, and now I’ve got new, bigger clothes, and they all smell of high rooms, tile stoves and sheep’s wool.

In the end, Dad came to get the bucket himself.

‘Can’t even ask for the smallest thing…’ he muttered, going through the hall into the kitchen.

The cleaning cupboard wasn’t in the hall. It was next to the food cupboard in the kitchen. Even the vacuum cleaner in the cupboard was a different colour from the one I’m sitting on in an old photo.

7

7

I’m woken up by the ghost. It’s already sitting on the edge of my bed, pinning my hands down under the cover so they can’t move. It doesn’t look nasty or evil, just dead. Mum’s ghost is looking at me but I can tell from its expression it doesn’t recognize me.

It bends towards me and starts moving its lips. Its dark hair flops down in a familiar way. At first I only hear hissing, then I feel its breath.

My face is cold.

Then words come out. As if a radio were looking for a channel, the words have started but are hard to distinguish. Finally, I make out a whisper in the hissing:

‘Snip! Snap! Snip!’

And after a while, again: ‘Snip! Snap! Snip!’

I don’t want to hear any more – I know what the words are. When I was little, Mum once borrowed Struwwelpeter from the library because she thought it was a funny book. But I was scared of Struwwelpeter and the book went back the following week. I was too frightened even to go near the H shelf, where Struwwelpeter lurked.