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Prologue

Careful What You Wish For

My name is Elizabeth Anne Jones, and this is my story.

Most everyone longs for a less ordinary life. A life of danger, fun and adventure. Everyone wants to live life to the full. No one wants to be ordinary.

My twin sister Coraline and I were two such people.

When we were ten, our parents, who were garden cataloguists, decided to move. Or, rather, their boss decided that we should move. We wanted somewhere with a big garden ("We", being Coraline and I). My parents wanted a flat. So we compromised.

We ended up moving into the Pink Palace; an old Victorian house which was divided into four different flats. We got one of the landing flats (the other one was empty), and we had neighbours down in the basement and in the attic. The garden was huge, but empty, with no life. We had an old tennis court that seemed decayed with time.

At first, it had seemed that we were going to live the same boring life as we were leading in Michigan. Even our new school seemed boring.

But, as time went by, we learnt that the house is far from ordinary and dull.

You know the saying, "be careful what you wished for"?

The story starts when we found that little pink door hidden under the wallpaper in the drawing room….