Sunny and the Ghosts Read online

  SUNNY AND THE GHOSTS

  by

  ALISON MOORE

  Illustrated by

  ROSS COLLINS

  SYNOPSIS

  Sometimes, when you open a door or lift a lid, you find exactly what you expected to find: coats in the coat cupboard, bread in the bread bin, toys in the toy box. And sometimes you don’t.

  When Sunny’s parents buy an antique shop, they get more than they bargained for: in some of the old furniture, Sunny finds ghosts. Each of the ghosts has an unfulfilled desire, something they never did in their lifetime: Walter wants to learn to read, Violet wants to write a novel, Mary and Elsie want to go to the seaside. While Sunny is trying to help them all, it seems someone else is out to cause trouble…

  PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORK

  ‘There is an insistent, rhythmic quality to Moore’s writing, and a dark imagination at work.’ —GENEVIEVE FOX, Daily Mail

  ‘Moore’s distinctive voice commands exceptional power.’ —DINAH BIRCH, The Guardian

  ‘Impressive and memorable.’ —MERRIC DAVIDSON, The New Writer

  ‘It deserves to be read, and reread.’ —Isabel Berwick, Financial Times

  Alison Moore has been writing stories since she was a child, and was first published – through a local writing competition – when she was eight. She began writing her first novel, The Lighthouse, the year her son was born, and has now had four novels published. Sunny and the Ghosts is her first book for children. She lives in a village on the Leicestershire-Nottinghamshire border with her husband and son and a cat called Shadow.

  Ross Collins was born in Glasgow, Scotland, quite a while ago. At that time he would eat anything and resembled a currant bun. Ross has written sixteen children’s books and illustrated over a hundred. He no longer resembles a currant bun. He lives in Glasgow with a strange woman, a small child and a stupid dog.

  Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

  12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © Alison Moore, 2018

  The right of Alison Moore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All illustrations remain the copyright of Ross Collins.

  The moral right of Ross Collins to be identified as the illustrator of this Work has been asserted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2018

  Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-78463-127-7 electronic

  For Arthur, Tommy and Tess

  Sometimes, when you open a door or lift a lid, you find exactly what you expected to find: coats in the coat cupboard, bread in the bread bin, toys in the toy box. And sometimes you don’t.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The First Ghost

  In the New Year, Sunny’s mum and dad bought a small shop in Devon, and the three of them moved into the flat above it. The shop sold antique furniture, vintage clothes, second-hand books. These were the words on the sign at the front of the shop –

  – and they all meant old. Everything in the shop was old, and sometimes what came into the shop was damaged, but between them they would fix it up and then Sunny’s mum would say that it was as good as new. ‘It’s a funny phrase, that,’ said Sunny’s dad. ‘Like new things are better than old things.’

  Sunny’s dad liked old things. When he went out in the van, as he had done just that morning to fetch a Victorian piano and a blanket box, he played golden oldies on the van’s stereo – music from before Sunny was born, from before Sunny’s dad was born, from when Sunny’s grandparents were young. His dad said that these songs made the van feel happier. Sunny loved the old music, and he loved the old things that were brought back in the van.

  His dad had once brought into the shop a wardrobe with an ancient winter coat hanging inside it. The coat’s buttons were done up and the ends of the sleeves were tucked into the pockets as if someone invisible were still wearing it, still feeling the cold. ‘I bet this coat could tell some stories,’ he said to Sunny, taking it out of the wardrobe and hanging it up on a clothes rail on the far side of the shop. When his dad was not looking, Sunny put the coat back inside the wardrobe, where he felt it wanted to be.

  His dad came home with mirrors that were more than a hundred years old. ‘I bet this looking glass has seen a few things in its time,’ he would say. It was Sunny’s job to clean these mirrors which were hung on the wall, and to buff the brass coal scuttles that were displayed in the front window, and to polish the copper kettles, out of which he always felt – if he rubbed hard enough – a genie might appear.

  He could get up such a shine that he could see his reflection in the pots and pans just as well as he could see it in a mirror. When his dad crouched down next to him to say, ‘Great job, Sunny,’ Sunny could see his dad’s reflection too. The two of them had the same curly hair. Their hair just would not lie flat. It did what it wanted to do. It did its own thing.

  Sunny’s mum liked the old things too. She liked the butterflies, which had been preserved and labelled and framed like pictures. She liked the antique clocks, which were all set to the right time and once an hour all the ones that had cuckoos in them cuckooed and all the ones that bonged bonged. Against the wall on which the framed butterflies and the antique clocks hung, they placed the piano that had just arrived. Sunny’s mum pressed down an ivory key and a deep note came out. ‘Just think,’ she said, ‘how many tunes this piano must have played in its time.’ One of these days, she said, she would learn to play the piano.

  She especially loved a pair of ornamental pigs, which she put, very carefully, on top of the piano. The pigs were kind of weird but Sunny loved them too. They were round and shiny and he was tempted to play with them, but they were fragile and quite valuable and were the only items in the shop that Sunny was not allowed to touch, not even to clean them, in case they got broken.

  Sunny polished the wooden furniture: the wardrobe, the piano, the blanket box. He polished the wood until it looked like somebody loved it, like it was cared for. When he had finished, he opened up the blanket box. They had had a blanket box in the shop before. It had been full of blankets. Inside this one, he found a ghost.

  ‘Dad . . . ?’ he called, but his dad was in the back of the van, moving things around, and could not hear him.

  ‘Mum . . . ?’ he called, but his mum was upstairs with the radio on and could not hear him.

  Sunny stared at the ghost, who looked very old and wore stripy pyjamas. He looked gaunt and unhappy and was moaning and groaning. Even after he got out of the blanket box and could stretch out his thin limbs, he still seemed unhappy.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Sunny.

  ‘I feel travel sick,’ said the ghost.

  Sunny tried to rub the ghost’s back, and fetched him a drink of water. The ghost said thank you and lifted the glass to his ghostly mouth, but the water fell straight through his ghostly body and made a puddle on the floor.

  ‘Oh dear,
’ said the ghost. ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Sunny, and he fetched a cloth and mopped up the puddle. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘I was brought here in the blanket box,’ said the ghost.

  ‘But what were you doing in the blanket box?’ asked Sunny.

  ‘I was frightened,’ said the ghost. ‘For days, I’d been alone and everything had been quiet, and then all of a sudden I heard people. I was in my bedroom and I could hear men talking and making a lot of noise in the hallway and then coming up the stairs. I hid in the blanket box. It’s nice in there, very cosy. But then I felt it being picked up and carried out of the house. It was put into the back of the van, along with the piano, and I was brought here.’

  ‘That will have been my dad,’ said Sunny.

  ‘What will?’ said his dad, coming back into the shop with a coat stand and a teapot.

  ‘Dad,’ said Sunny, ‘there was a ghost in the blanket box.’

  ‘Was there now?’ said his dad. ‘Well, that is unusual. I imagine it will feel right at home here though, amongst all these old things.’ He put down the coat stand and the teapot. ‘Right, that’s enough for today, let’s go up and have our tea.’ Sunny turned around to ask the ghost if he would be all right and if he needed anything, but the ghost had gone.

  In his bedroom above the shop, in the middle of the night, Sunny woke up. He could hear music, piano music. He lay in his bed, listening. It was coming from downstairs.

  He picked up his night light, got out of bed and went to his parents’ room. When he opened the door, his mum woke up, and Sunny said, ‘Mum, I can hear someone playing the piano in the shop.’

  His mum sat up and listened. ‘I can’t hear anyone playing the piano,’ she said. And neither could Sunny now – the house was silent. ‘You must have been dreaming,’ said his mum. ‘Go back to bed.’

  Sunny went back to bed, but no sooner had he got back under the covers than the piano music started again. He got out of bed and took his night light back out onto the landing. He could definitely hear music down there in the dark. He pushed open his parents’ bedroom door and the music stopped. His dad sat up. ‘Dad,’ said Sunny, ‘I heard someone playing the piano in the shop.’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ said his dad, but he was listening really hard, like he wasn’t sure.

  ‘Can we go and look?’ asked Sunny.

  His dad sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. He found his slippers and rubbed his eyes. ‘Let’s go and see.’

  His dad switched on the landing light and went down first, his feet heavy on the stairs. He switched on the hallway light and said, ‘Let’s have a look then,’ as he opened the door to the shop and went in. In the light from the hallway and from the streetlamp at the front of the shop, Sunny, looking at the piano, saw the evidence straight away.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the lid of the piano’s up.’

  ‘You must have left it up after giving it a polish,’ said his dad, putting the lid down again.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Sunny. ‘It must have been the ghost.’

  His dad rubbed his face and said, ‘Come on, back to bed.’ He shut the door behind them, and switched off the hallway light, and then the landing light, and they both went back to bed.

  Sunny lay under the covers, listening, until he finally fell asleep, just as the first few notes of Bananas in Pyjamas were coming up the stairs.

  From Monday to Saturday, the shop opened at nine o’clock in the morning and closed at five o’clock in the afternoon. There was a sign on the door that said so:

  At five o’clock, the sign was turned around so that it said CLOSED, and the front door was locked, and then it was teatime. Except that there was one regular customer, Mr Ramsbottom, who was in the habit of coming into the shop at one minute to five, as he did one Saturday when Sunny was in the shop with his dad. Mr Ramsbottom came in eating a jam doughnut in spite of another sign that said NO FOOD OR DRINK IN THE SHOP. It even said PLEASE and THANK YOU.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re closing in a minute,’ said Sunny’s dad, who had at that very moment been fetching the door key from the cash desk.

  Mr Ramsbottom walked slowly around the shop. He looked at the cuckoo clocks, and at the cuckooing cuckoos. He opened and closed the lid of the piano. He picked up every copper kettle and every brass pot. He inspected a glass fruit bowl and took out a couple of the plastic apples displayed inside it. Since retiring, Mr Ramsbottom had been finding new hobbies to fill his time. He had been learning to play the violin, and he had been learning to juggle. Sunny had seen him practising, juggling oranges and tomatoes outside the greengrocer’s. He had seen the fruit landing in the gutter, and Mr Ramsbottom refusing to buy it.

  ‘Mr Ramsbottom . . .’ said Sunny’s dad, but Mr Ramsbottom was busy juggling the plastic apples. Sunny’s dad said again, ‘Mr Ramsbottom . . .’

  ‘Don’t put me off,’ said Mr Ramsbottom. He struggled to juggle more than two things at a time – if he tried to add a third orange or tomato or plastic apple, he was likely to drop the lot. Luckily, the plastic apples did not burst when dropped, unlike the tomatoes.

  At ten past five, Sunny’s dad said, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to lock up soon.’

  When Mr Ramsbottom had gone all the way around the shop once, he went back around the shop for a second look at everything.

  At twenty past five, Sunny’s dad said, ‘We’ll be open again at nine o’clock on Monday morning, Mr Ramsbottom.’

  Mr Ramsbottom continued to browse. Sunny could smell the sausages that he knew they were having for tea and which were probably already on the table. His tummy rumbled, and then he heard his dad’s tummy rumbling too.

  At half past five, Sunny’s dad said to Mr Ramsbottom, ‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Ramsbottom. ‘I don’t want anything you’ve got in this shop.’ And, leaving the kettles and pots and pans all out of place and in need of another polish, Mr Ramsbottom left.

  Sunday was the one day of the week when the shop was closed to the public, but Sunny was often in there helping out.

  ‘Right, Sunny,’ said his dad, coming up from the cellar with a cardboard box full of old books. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’ He put down the box. ‘Mr Ramsbottom’s sister has moved to America. These were her books but she decided not to take them with her. She left them with Mr Ramsbottom, but he doesn’t want them so he’s sold them to us.’

  Sunny looked at his dad. They both knew that when Mr Ramsbottom sold them something, he was likely to change his mind about it later and want it back. At one time or another, he had been in with a gramophone with a broken turntable, and a grand­father clock that was not keeping time, and all sorts of other things, which Sunny’s dad had fixed and which Sunny had polished, and then Mr Ramsbottom had come into the shop saying that, as a matter of fact, he wanted his things back. Sunny’s dad always returned Mr Ramsbottom’s things without complaining and without charging him for the time spent fixing them up, but whenever he saw Mr Ramsbottom coming he sighed.

  Sunny’s dad pointed to the box of books. ‘These books,’ he said, ‘need to go on those shelves.’ He pointed to a bookcase. ‘Put them alphabetically: Adams, Brontë, Carroll, Dickens, and so on.’

  While his dad went off to make a cup of tea, Sunny knelt down in front of the bookcase and started putting the books in order on the shelves. He had just got to Dickens when he heard someone moaning.

  ‘I’m so bored,’ said this whingeing voice.

  Sunny looked around and saw the ghost that had been in the blanket box. ‘Why don’t you play the piano?’ suggested Sunny, putting A Christmas Carol on a bookshelf.

  ‘I can’t,’ said the ghost. ‘I don’t know how to.’

  ‘But I heard you,’ said Sunny. ‘I heard you playing in the middle of the night. You play very
well.’

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ said the ghost. ‘I’ve never played a note. I don’t know any tunes.’

  ‘But I thought it was your piano,’ said Sunny. ‘I mean, it came from the same house as the blanket box that you were inside.’

  ‘It is my piano,’ said the ghost, ‘it belonged to my mother – but I never learnt to play it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Sunny. ‘Well, if it wasn’t you playing, who was it?’

  ‘That was Walter,’ said the ghost, and while Sunny finished shelving the books, the ghost moaned about Walter. ‘He played the piano all night long,’ said the ghost. ‘He played Bananas in Pyjamas over and over again, I don’t know how many times, I lost count.’

  ‘Where’s Walter now?’ asked Sunny.

  ‘He’s in the wardrobe,’ said the ghost, nodding to the wardrobe that had the winter coat inside it. Sunny went over to the wardrobe and opened the doors, but all he could see in there was the coat hanging from the rail.

  His dad came back into the shop and saw Sunny standing by the wardrobe. ‘Have you done the books?’ he said. ‘Good lad.’

  ‘Dad,’ said Sunny, ‘I think there’s a ghost in this wardrobe.’

  ‘Do you now?’ said his dad.

  ‘His name’s Walter,’ said Sunny.

  ‘And what makes you think there’s a ghost in the wardrobe?’ asked his dad.

  ‘The other ghost told me,’ said Sunny, turning towards where the ghost had been, but it was no longer there. ‘The one that was in the blanket box.’