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empties herself of all the untidy things. She makes sure that everything else is stored neatly – like her toys in her bedroom, ordered alphabetically on her shelves. Once she has done this then her head is a good place to be. At the moment the tidying is taking a long time. This is because she has a house in her head. This is bad. But she is making things tidy so soon it will be good. Soon.
    Â Â Sometimes she becomes aware of things that are happening outside her own head. They are distant. Like when her father used to listen to the radio in the garage. She would hear those voices – he liked his radio loud – but she would not be able to hear the words because she was not in the garage with them. They would be shapes not words. Up and down shapes. Happy or angry shapes. Singing shapes or talking shapes. She grew to like those shapes. They meant her father was close-by. They meant her father was happy. Sometimes he would add his own shapes to them, singing along or telling the footballers what to do. The footballers were silly, they always needed him to tell them what to do. They would have been lost without him.
    Â Â The shapes of the people on the outside of her head where like that. Sometimes she could tell when it was Alan who was talking. Or the Other Alan, the Older Alan. To have two Alans was very strange. To begin with she had wondered if everybody everywhere was Alan but some of the shapes were lady shapes and so that couldn't be right. Then she remembered that everything in this House was strange and so decided that two Alans was good. If only there were three. Three was good.
    Â Â But mostly she didn't hear the outside shapes. She had enough to deal with inside her own head and that meant that she didn't have time for anything else.
    Â Â Besides, sometimes there were sound shapes inside her own head. She thought they were from the House. Houses did not speak. This was a fact. There were a lot of things Houses Did Not Do. She started to make a list:
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1. Houses do not speak.
    2. Houses do not walk.
    3. Houses do not eat.
    4. Houses do not…
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    Â Â There were lots of things Houses Did Not Do and she grew bored before she'd even begun. Besides, if somebody had asked her to make a list of things Houses Did Not Do before she had come here she would have definitely put things like…
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1. Houses do not have jungles in their greenhouse.
    2. Houses do not have seas in their bathroom.
    3. Houses do not change shape.
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    Â Â â€¦on the list. And so her list would have been wrong. You had to be careful of lists. They kept changing unless you were very, very careful about what you put on them.
    Â Â So maybe the House was talking to her. Maybe this was one of those things that Houses Should Not Be Able To Do But Apparently Can.
    Â Â Sophie couldn't understand what it was saying. She thought that perhaps this was because the sounds were not really words. When she had been younger she had talked to a dog she met outside the Post Office. Her mother had wanted stamps (the stamps that make letters go not the stamps that hurt) so she had been queuing to buy some. This had made Sophie Very Bored so she had gone to stand outside and talk to the dog. This had been frustrating. Not because the dog couldn't talk. Lots of things could not talk and they didn't make Sophie angry. It was because the dog could nearly talk but not quite. It had inclined its head to listen to her words and then made its barking noise as a reply. But Sophie could not understand what the barking noise meant. The dog had been trying to talk to her. She just couldn't understand what it was saying. That was what made Sophie frustrated. When her mother had been given her stamps she came outside and laughed at Sophie. This made Sophie cross. But not as cross as when her mother had said that dogs couldn't talk. Sophie knew that was one of those things that grown-ups tell Sophie because they cannot