Eggshell Days by Rebecca Gregson Page A

true.”
    â€œThen you have one duty to him, and one duty alone.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œTo make the most of your joie de vivre. He used to say you inherited it from him.”
    â€œThat may be true, too.”
    â€œSo you must let Bodinnick make you as happy as it made him. Make your life exactly what you want it to be.”
    â€œIt would help if I knew.”
    â€œHe always thought you did know.”
    â€œAh,” Emmy had said feebly. “But what about you? Are you sure you don’t want to stay on?”
    â€œThank you, my dear, but I couldn’t bear to be there without him. My cottage in Totnes will serve me more than well until I go and join him.”
    Once she knew that, she had been brave enough to ask the rest. She’d tried not to focus on the drip hanging from the end of his long, thin nose.
    â€œDo you think I could share the house? With friends? A sort of cooperative, so that all of us and none of us own it? They’re good friends, best friends, they’re more important to me than my family. I’d trust them with my life.”
    Julian had said, with a nod so definite that the nose drip fell and settled on his mustard cashmere scarf, that he thought that would make Toby very happy indeed. He said Toby knew all about friends being more important than family, present company excepted.
    Amazing, since the wedding and the train crash were, at that stage, still a whole week away. Spooky, even.
    Perhaps the manor had been nurturing her all her life for this. Her responses to the place had always been different from the rest of the family’s. She was the only one who never got scared here as a child, the only one who came and stayed with Toby on her own, the only one who wanted to play in the attic, poke around the rooms, make dens in the garden. Her brothers used to pester for a day on the beach or a tent in the field, but Emmy always preferred to be within striking distance of its thick granite walls. Being inside its grounds was like having her own fortified town. She never wanted to be queen, just inhabitant. Besides, it had already had its queen.
    â€œBe careful!” she shouted to the children as one of the fake marble columns wobbled. It was verging on the disrespectful, the way they were suddenly lost in the desire to possess. Half an hour ago, they had been tearful, taunting and homesick. Now they were behaving like a crack team of consummate carjackers. Well, they hadn’t been near a shop other than the village one for ten days, which must be a record.
    â€œUh, I need a man!” Maya shouted, trying to drag the pink bicycle free from its prison of ropes and old chairs.
    Don’t we all, darling? Emmy felt like replying.
    â€œJaysus! It’s Liberace’s dressing room.”
    Oh my God, she thought, leaping out of her skin as Niall appeared from nowhere. I can do thought-transference. Wish him, and he appears.
    He had his arm round Prince Philip. “I’m beginning to see what your family were up against,” he said, moving the figure to one side.
    â€œCareful. Toby’s ghost lives on, you know. He’ll come to haunt you with his feather boa and Judy Garland record collection.”
    â€œI hope so. It’d be nice to see him again.”
    â€œWouldn’t it.”
    â€œIt would. This is great,” he said, looking around. “God almighty, that’s an amplifier and a half.”
    â€œThat was for his electric guitar.”
    â€œWhere’s the guitar, then? Is that still around?”
    â€œDon’t even think about it.”
    â€œToo late. The seed has been sown. It’s years since I played.”
    â€œAnd you were terrible even then.”
    â€œGet on. I was great.”
    They both thought of the first time he had sung to her.
    â€œThat train was a stroke of luck,” he said.
    â€œAnd which train would that be?” she asked coyly.
    â€œThat would be both of