Free House of Echoes by Barbara Erskine

few days to settle in on your own.’
    ‘But we don’t. We’ve already discussed this, and I want you here.’ She knew she sounded like a spoiled child. With a miserable sniff Joss turned towards the stove and reached for the kettle. ‘You can’t go. Mum needn’t do anything heavy. She can rest here – ’
    ‘I think maybe they’re right, Joss,’ Luke said quietly. He glanced over her head at his father-in-law.
    ‘Well, at least Lyn can stay.’ Joss took a deep breath. Picking up a jug of milk she reached for Tom’s beaker.
    ‘No, love. Lyn is coming with us.’ Joe hooked the toast rack towards him. Selecting a piece he buttered it and cut it into strips,putting them down in front of his grandson. ‘We’ve talked it over with her too. She can come back next week if you want her, if she hasn’t got another temporary job by then.’ He sighed. Uninterested in anything academic Lyn had left school at sixteen and drifted from one unsatisfactory temporary job to another. While Joss had stayed on to do her A levels and followed that with a brilliant career at Bristol University and then a teaching post, Lyn, at the age of twenty-eight, with two failed relationships and an aborted attempt at running her own catering business behind her, had moved back in with her parents and resumed her half-hearted trawl through the agencies. Joe shook his head. ‘Then your mum and I will return on the Wednesday after that in plenty of time for Christmas. And we’ll all stay as long as you like to help you get straight.’
    ‘They had it all planned!’ Standing in the coach house later, with Tom’s gloved hand clutched in her own Joss stared at her husband’s back as he leaned over the huge rusting engine of the Bentley. ‘Why? Was it your idea?’
    Luke straightened. ‘No, it wasn’t. But I had the same feeling they did. You need to be here on your own, Joss. It’s important. You need to explore. To get the feel of the place. They know you as well as I do – better, for God’s sake. We all know how special places are to you.’ He walked over to the bench by the wall where already he had laid out a selection of his tools.
    She shook her head. ‘Am I so predictable? You can all tell how I feel before I feel it?’
    ‘Fraid so!’ He chuckled.
    ‘And what about you? What are you going to feel about this place?’
    ‘Cold mostly.’ And uneasy, he was going to say, though he wasn’t quite sure why. The same way Joe and Alice had felt. They hadn’t said anything, but he could see it in their eyes. No wonder they had wanted to get away. ‘So, if you could arrange to have the kettle on in say half an hour, I can come in and thaw out. I want to keep to my plan if I can. Work on the old bus for George Maxim in the mornings, and on the house and garden in the afternoon. That way I can divide my time. Joss –’ He looked suddenly concerned. ‘We weren’t all ganging up on you, love. I promise. Listen, if you think you are going to feel a bit lonely, why don’t you ask that Goodyear woman and her husband overfor a meal. They are obviously dying to find out about us and we can do some reciprocal pumping about the house.’
       
    ‘Right, Tom Tom, let’s start at the top today for a change.’ Two days of unrelenting unpacking and sorting and cleaning later, her phone call made, and her invitation for supper at the end of the week ecstatically accepted by the Goodyears and the Fairchilds at the post office, Joss picked up a duster and broom and made for the stairs, the little boy running purposefully behind her.
    In the attics a series of small rooms led out of one another, all empty, all wallpapered in small faded flowers and leaves, all with sloping ceilings and dark, dusty beams. Those facing south were full of bright winter sunshine warm behind the glass of the windows; those which looked out over the front of the house were cold and shadowed. Joss glanced at the little boy. He was staying very close to her,