A House Without Mirrors

“O
ne
hundred
! Ready or not, here I come!”

The echo of my cry bounced around the hall in Henrietta’s house for a moment before dying out. As silence returned I could hear the creaking of the parquet floors upstairs. It was my cousins looking for places to hide.

We played hide-and-seek nearly every day, but I rarely got to be the seeker. Both Wilma and Erland said that it wouldn’t be fair, as I could find my way around Henrietta’s house so much better than they could. I suppose they were right, as Dad always let me tag along when he was looking after Henrietta, but it’s still not much fun when you hardly ever get to be the seeker.

And, besides, you’d have expected my cousins to know their way around by then. Wilma and her
mum, Dad’s sister Kajsa, had arrived over three weeks before, and Erland and Signe had been here since school broke up. Their dad, Uncle Daniel, worked at the university, so he had the summers off.

But no one had been at Henrietta’s house as long as me and Dad. Apart from Henrietta herself, of course.

The afternoon light fell through the stained-glass mosaic in the window up above the stairs and seeped out in pale-coloured stains across the floor in the hall. The floor was black and white, like a chessboard, and sometimes I remembered playing a sort of pretend chess there when I was little. I remembered the feeling very clearly, and I remembered that somebody else was there with me. Henrietta, perhaps, in the days when she could still walk on her own.

I quickly searched the ground floor. There weren’t that many places to hide, as Henrietta had sold or given away most of her furniture since she’d been living here alone. Dad says that she’d been preparing for death for a long time.

Many of the rooms were completely empty now; just some junk against the walls, or a cupboard too heavy to be moved. When you’re playing
hide-and-seek, that emptiness is good for the seeker and bad for the hiders.

I slunk through the dining room, the parlours and lounges and the corner room, which was called the Office, and continued towards the conservatory, which was a large, glassed-in room at the back of the house.

There was no one there, and no one in the kitchen or the pantry either. Not even Signe, my youngest cousin. Signe usually hid close to the kitchen because she was a little afraid of the dark.

On the great stairs leading up to the first floor and the drawing rooms, I stopped and listened. The creaking had stopped; they had probably all found places to hide. They could be anywhere.

Dad said that he hardly knew how many rooms there were in Henrietta’s house, but that was just him talking. He knew as well as I did that there were nineteen. Twenty with the conservatory. Ten of the rooms were bedrooms—if you counted the two tiny ones behind the kitchen that used to be the cook’s room and the maid’s room, when Henrietta and my
great-grandfather
were kids nearly a hundred years ago.

I had barely started looking through the drawing rooms when I saw somebody standing on the stairs
leading up to the second floor. At first I thought it was Erland lurking there in the shadows on the landing with his arms hanging down beside him. But luckily it wasn’t. It was Signe, Erland’s little sister.

“What’s up, Signe?” I asked. “Can’t you find a place to hide?”

Signe shook her head. She looked frightened. Both Erland and Uncle Daniel treated Signe as if she were a dimwit, just because she never said anything. She wasn’t. She just didn’t like talking.

I went up to the landing where Signe was standing and reached out my hand towards her.

“Come,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

Signe took my hand and together we climbed the stairs towards the bedrooms. When we reached the dark corridor leading to my room, I could feel Signe’s hand tightening around mine. I squeezed her hand back.

She could have hidden in my room, or the one Dad sometimes slept in, but I reckoned that the one at the end of the corridor would be a bit more exciting.

It was a large octagonal room where Henrietta’s English mother used to keep her clothes over a
hundred years ago. It was empty now, but there were plenty of wardrobes to hide in.

“Here, sweetie,” I said, pushing her into the room. “Choose whichever door you want, okay?”

Signe watched me with her solemn grey eyes while I checked there were no keys left in any of the half-opened wardrobe doors. There weren’t, not even in the middle one, which was locked.

“Okay, Signe? Just hide in one of the wardrobes, whichever one you like.”

She was only five, and you had to spell everything out to her. Sometimes you really couldn’t be sure that she’d understood, but this time she actually nodded.

“Good,” I said, and stroked her hair. “Hide now, and I’ll come and find you in a little while.”

I didn’t wait to see which wardrobe she entered. That would have been cheating.

Carrying my shoes in my hand, I sneaked back down the stairs to the drawing rooms again. I knew exactly which steps squeaked and I avoided them carefully.

The great challenge of being a seeker was finding Wilma. She came up with hiding places you’d never think of. Once she was hiding inside the grand piano
in the downstairs parlour, lying on top of the strings with the lid down. Erland was the seeker, and he never found her. When Wilma told us where she had been, Erland blabbed to his dad, Uncle Daniel, and Wilma got a right telling-off.

Uncle Daniel probably thought that kids shouldn’t play at all, and we were not allowed to call him just Daniel. We had to call him Uncle Daniel, although he was only just a bit older than Dad. It didn’t bother me, though. He really was just like a boring old man.

The first three drawing rooms closest to the stairs were empty. The large dining room and the nursery too. I went through them rather quickly as it was usually Erland who hid there. I preferred not to find him.

“Psst.”

I didn’t even turn my head when I heard the hiss. No one could
psst
as creepily as Erland. Like a snake with a tiny giggle hiding under the hissing.

“Erland is tagged,” I said. “On top of the wardrobe.”

He was already on his way back down when I turned around. Normally Erland got angry when you beat him at something, but this time he didn’t seem to mind.

“Bravo,” he said, looking at me with that grin that I hated. “Aren’t you the clever one?”

Erland was only seven, but he was not at all like a child. He walked slowly and talked like a little old man. Just like his dad, come to think of it. Perhaps that’s not all that strange, as Erland and Signe lived alone with Uncle Daniel. No one ever mentioned their mum, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t dead.

I walked towards the hall and could hear Erland sneaking after me. He followed me up towards the second floor too.

“Will you help me find Wilma, then?” I said over my shoulder, hoping he’d say no.

But Erland didn’t say yes or no. With a few quick steps he overtook me and placed himself in my way at the top of the stairs.

“Look at this, Thomasine, puke-medicine,” he said, pulling something that looked like false teeth out of his pocket. “Look out so I don’t bite you!”

He clacked the false teeth like castanets and they grinned at me, unnervingly like a real mouth.

“Give me a break,” I said. “Where did you get hold of?…”

I felt a lump in my stomach as I realized.

They were Henrietta’s dentures. Erland must have crept up and taken them out of the glass on her bedside table when Dad wasn’t looking.

“Are you crazy? You can’t just steal her teeth!”

Erland only laughed and skulked off along the corridor—straight into Dad.

“What’s going on?” Dad said.

He didn’t sound angry. Not even when he saw the false teeth that Erland didn’t have time to hide. Dad never sounded angry, just sad and tired.

“Was it you who took them, Erland?” he said. “Henrietta needs them. She can’t eat properly without.”

Erland stared down at his feet.

“Somebody else must have nicked them,” he said. “I just found them.”

The way in which Erland told lies made me furious. He always got that trembling, miserable tone in his voice. As if you were supposed to feel sorry for him.

“Cut it out, Erland,” I snapped. “Who else would be as mean and dumb and—”

Dad held up a tired hand, and as always I shut up straight away.

“That’s enough, Thomasine,” he said. “Could you leave them on the stairs please, Erland? I’ll take them with me when I go back up again.”

Erland didn’t answer, but he walked towards the attic stairs that led up to the room where Henrietta was lying.

Erland was actually the only one, except for me and Dad, who ever went up to see Henrietta. Dad did it because he had to, and I did it because I wanted to help him out, but Erland had no real reason for sneaking around up there in the attic room. I think he was hoping that Henrietta would die while he was watching.

As soon as I was alone I sank down on the top step and let my hair fall over my face. I felt completely empty inside, but I knew I wouldn’t cry. Not this time.

At times, nearly every day, there were moments when I didn’t know how I would make it through the summer, or even the next hour. I didn’t belong in this silent house. The people who claimed to be my family felt like strangers.

I hardly recognized Dad any more.

“Hello? Thomasine? Is anyone seeking, or what?”

Wilma stood on the landing between the first and second floor, and I calmed down when I saw her, as I always did. If it wasn’t for Wilma I’m not sure I’d have had the energy to stay on.

I got up and wiped the hair out of my eyes.

“No, let’s stop,” I said, starting to walk down the stairs towards her. “I can’t be bothered any more.”

“Fine,” said Wilma. “Anyway, Mum’s here with the pizzas.”

When I reached her she put her arm around me.

Wilma was still a bit taller than me, even though I was catching up, and her arm felt good around my shoulders. Kind and warm, almost like Mum’s.

“Erland is mental,” I said. “Can you believe that he’d taken Henrietta’s false teeth? He was playing with them!”

Wilma stopped and looked at me.

“Henrietta has false teeth?” she whispered. “Seriously?”

At first I couldn’t tell if she was joking, but then I saw that she wasn’t. Quite often it feels as if Wilma is the younger of the two of us.

“Wilma, she is over a hundred years old,” I said. “Of course she has false teeth.”