times. It went from dazzling brilliance in the first mirror, to a silvery-dull echo of a gleam in the last. All the shades of light between these two extremes were to be found in the valley.
‘It’s a very bright scene,’ mused Alex. ‘I wonder how much candle-power is in there?’
Chloe said, ‘What candles?’
‘Candle-power is a measure of luminosity,’ replied Alex in a haughty tone, ‘whatever the light source is. Didn’t you know that?’
‘No, and you knew I didn’t, which was why you mentioned it.’
Alex smiled. ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t do that, sis. You know me …’
They entered the Vale of Mirrors, walking between two giant antique looking-glasses with ornate gilt frames. Even as they stepped into the gap that separated these two guardians of the valley Chloe realised this was no ordinary clutter of mirrors, which were there in a hundred varieties. Someone had collected these and brought them all to this place.
She said wondrously, ‘Look how many …’
There were mirrors from dressing-tables with wooden frames; from wardrobes; from retail clothes shops. There were bevelled mirrors with silver chains; spherical mirrors from ballrooms; hand mirrors, bathroom mirrors; fairground mirrors. There were huge mirrors from stately homes; tiny mirrors from musical boxes; long, lean mirrors, short, fat mirrors, mirrors with the quicksilver peeling away. There were mirrors from Turkey, from Samarkand, from Chad, from Fiji, from New England, Venice and Shanghai. There was every mirror, every looking-glass, from all the kingdoms and republics that the world has ever known. They stood, lay, were stacked, were scattered, were shattered, were placed in every position thinkable. There were mirror pools and mirror doors and mirror portholes. You could drown in mirrors, you could float in mirrors, you could lose your soul in their reflective surfaces, you could go stark – staring – mad.
The two giant mirrors which were the pillars of the valley entrance seemed to lock Chloe in a dual embrace. The trouble was, she hesitated and stared into the one on the right, and saw Chloes curving away into infinity. It made her dizzy to see millions of herself on both sides, sweeping off into a netherland of space, growing imperceptibly smaller until she disappeared. She turned away but the one on the left was even worse, for she was upside-down and arcing away on her head into a distant greyish otherworld.
She tore her eyes away, saying to Alex behind her, ‘Don’t look!’
But of course, he did.
Once they had entered the vale it was even worse. She was everywhere. Alex was everywhere. When they moved, a hundred other Chloes and Alexes moved, all in different directions. Some of these copies were fairground-mirror images and they warped and distorted the originals. They mocked the children with their willowy forms, or their fat, toadish, lumpy shapes.
Once out of the fairground cluster it was even worse, for at least she knew the right from the wrong Chloe in those undulating surfaces. In the clear mirrors she lost count of the times she bumped into herself, walking straight into a reflective surface and striking her face. It was utterly confusing to have so many altered images all moving at the same time, so she began to wonder which was the real Chloe and which were the fakes.
‘This is horrible,’ she said to Alex. ‘We have to get out of here.’
She turned to find Alex staring into a mirror which was not reflecting his form, but that of their living-room, back at the house. In this large mirror Dipa and Ben could be seen walking about, mouthing the names of the children, as if seeking them. When Alex let out a cry of anguish his parents looked out of the mirror at him, clearly not seeing him, but as if they had heard his yell and wondered where it came from.
‘Don’t stare at it,’ ordered Chloe. ‘It’s lying. Don’t let it fool you, Alex. There’s no one behind it.’
Alex tore himself away, just as Chloe confronted a looking-glass in which there was a scene of herself as a little girl picking daisies on a hillside. She remembered the picnic, which had been several years ago. Then coming up behind her was her father – her real father, not Ben – who was laughing and waving from a patch of bright-red poppies. There was her father, in the full flush of life, before he had died of his heart attack. His eyes were smiling, his skin was glowing in the sun and the wind, his hair flicking