“Look, with this side you look completely normal. And with this side you look bigger!”
Wilma turned the oval mirror back and forth, back and forth.
It was just like she said: on one side there was a normal mirror, and on the other side the glass was polished so that your reflection was enlarged.
“It’s a shaving mirror,” I said. “I googled it and found an image of one that was almost the same.”
“But where does it come from?” Wilma said, looking at her enlarged face, then turning the mirror and going back to normal again. “Whose is it?”
I got up from her unmade bed and walked to the window.
“Yours, now,” I said. “But don’t show it to anyone.”
Wilma’s room looked out over the conservatory. I gazed through the glass roof at the dried-out lily pond and benches empty of flowers. Someone was sitting on the stone floor down there. The head was bent, and the hair was covered with a woolly hat. Could it be the girl, Hetty, whom Signe had?…
No. When the figure stood up and went to the pond I saw straight away who it was. Erland was the only one to move in that sneaking, hunched-up way. I stepped back from the window.
“Did Signe show you where to find this?”
I turned around, and Wilma’s eyes met mine in the mirror.
“Erland told me that Signe had found a room full of mirrors up on the second floor,” she said when I didn’t reply. “I thought he was lying as usual.”
Could Signe really have told Erland about the mirrors? Hardly. It was more likely that he had spied on her and found out about the wardrobe that way.
“You shouldn’t believe everything Erland says,” I said so I didn’t have to lie. “He makes a lot of stuff up.”
And that was undeniably true.
Far below on the ground floor the front door closed. You noticed it more as a change in the atmosphere than as a sound, but I realized that it had to be Uncle Daniel returning with the pizzas for supper.
“Shall we go down?” I said, walking towards the door. “Dinner’s ready.”
I didn’t make it past Wilma’s desk before she grabbed my arm and held me back.
“Tommy, tell me, please,” she said. “I want to know too!”
“Know what? Let go of me!”
But Wilma held my wrist tight and I knew I had to meet her gaze.
“What happened to Signe yesterday?” she said and looked straight into me. “Erland said that she had… I don’t know, that something had happened to her.”
I shrugged.
“Yeah, but that’s Erland.”
“But I saw it for myself!” Wilma said, holding on to my arm. “She turned into a completely different child in the matter of half an hour.”
“She did?”
I could hear how daft I sounded, and Wilma just kept on staring at me.
“Did Signe see something, Thomasine?” she said. “Did she go inside that wardrobe?”
For a moment I considered telling her about the dream that hadn’t been a dream. But the thought alone felt like I was betraying something. Or someone.
“Don’t tell anyone about the mirror, okay? Not even Kajsa,” I said, wriggling free. “Come on now, I’m hungry.”
Uncle Daniel had bought dessert. A whole ice-cream cake from the freezer at the co-op. That had never happened before.
“Do we have something to celebrate?” Kasja said after Dad removed the pizza boxes and Uncle Daniel plonked the ice-cream cake onto the dinner table.
“Perhaps,” he said, putting down a stack of plates in front of her. “I saw an estate agent today. A neighbour of someone in my department.”
Kajsa leant back in her chair and crossed her arms.
“An estate agent?” she said. “Why?”
Uncle Daniel sat down next to her. That was another thing he’d never done before.
“To get a proper valuation,” he said, almost whispering. “You can’t really put a price on great big houses like this without an expert opinion.”
Kajsa didn’t reply, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Did you see an estate agent to ask how much you would get for Henrietta’s house if you sell it?” I said. “But it’s not yours, is it?”
Uncle Daniel blushed and reached for the bread knife.
“Where I come from a child doesn’t take part in adult conversations,” he said, hard-faced. “Especially when they run the risk of going without dessert.”
I felt myself reddening.
“I’m not a child,” I mumbled.
Kajsa waved me aside.
“So, what did they say?” she asked. “Were they able to give you a price?”
Uncle Daniel left her waiting. First he cut a big chunk of the melting cake and let it balance on the knife above his plate. Then he cut another piece, slightly smaller, and placed it on Erland’s plate.
“They have to see the house first, of course,” he said finally. “But Ove—the estate agent, that is—said that it’s common for a property as large as this to be sold to a property developer. For offices, or to convert it into flats.”
“But what does that mean?” Kajsa said. “What does it mean in terms of money?”
Uncle Daniel pushed the knife and the plate with the cake towards Signe, glanced towards the door where Dad had disappeared, and turned to Kajsa again.
“Twenty million kronor,” he said, and now he was whispering for real. “Perhaps even twenty-five with the right buyer!”
Kajsa’s face didn’t move, but her fingers started drumming against her arm.
“Hmm,” she said. “Minus the mortgage, of course, and…”
“What mortgage?” Uncle Daniel laughed hoarsely. “There is no mortgage. Not a penny!”
He spread his hands and smiled more broadly than I had ever seen him smile before.
And yet he did not look happy.
Signe was having trouble cutting the cake, and had managed only to destroy it. I reached over to help her, because I felt sorry for her, but also because I wanted to busy myself with something else and hide away. Something about Uncle Daniel’s eyes almost made me cry. They were dead, in some strange way.
Kajsa pulled the cake and the knife towards her as soon as I had served Signe. I didn’t have the chance to serve myself.
“Have you talked to Thomas?”
“Ah, Thomas!” Uncle Daniel rolled his eyes almost like Wilma does.
“Thomas doesn’t understand such things,” he said, pushing a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. “But I’m pretty sure he could do with the money. He hasn’t written a word for the last five years, has he?”
The bang when Wilma thumped her hand on the table was so loud that I flinched.
Uncle Daniel too; he almost choked on his ice cream.
“Thomas is the only one here who’s bothered about Henrietta!” Wilma shouted, standing up so quickly that her chair fell over. “You’re only bothered about the money!”
Uncle Daniel didn’t say anything, but Kajsa’s face grew all white and stiff.
“Wilma, that’s enough,” she said quietly. “Go up to your room. And you can forget about going to that party tonight!”
Wilma looked as if she had been slapped. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but then it remained shut.
She stomped out and I heard the stairs creaking under her heavy weight as she ran up them. The ice-cream cake had been left in front of Erland and he had started eating it straight from the serving plate with his own spoon. I realized there would be nothing left for me, so I stood up and made for the door.
Behind me Uncle Daniel and Kajsa had started whispering again.