Eggshell Days
Page 30
“Love it.”
“And me. What about anchovies?”
“No. Vile things. You might as well lick the bottom of a boat.”
Maya laughed. “Pineapple?”
“Like it cold, can’t stand it hot.”
“Snap.” She turned over for puddings. “What would you choose out of apple pie or chocolate fudge cake?”
“Chocolate fudge cake,” he said, crossing his fingers.
“Me too. Pecan pie or crème caramel?”
“Pecan pie.”
“No,” she said. “You’re wrong. You wouldn’t. You’d choose crème caramel.”
“Oh, sorry, can you repeat the question?”
“Pecan pie or crème caramel?”
“That’d be crème caramel, definitely.” He knew what she was doing.
“Right, what is your favorite color?” she asked.
He looked at her carefully. “Orange or purple,” he hedged.
“You’re only allowed one.”
He drew in a breath. “It’s a difficult one.”
She took off her denim jacket and showed him her purple hooded top with the silver star.
“Purple, then.”
“Is the right answer.”
He looked at his watch. “Do you want to order?”
“Have we got time?”
“Read your mum’s text again. What time’s she getting in?”
“Paddington at 8:25. Is that long enough?”
No, Cathal wanted to say. It’s not long enough at all. But it’s a start.
“That’s long enough for the pepperoni, the black olives, the chocolate fudge cake and the crème caramel if you want.”
* * *
Niall was surprised to see Wreckers Ale for sale at the station buffet. He had no real thirst for Roy Mundy’s favorite tipple and just one warm can cost him more than an entire lunchtime round at the Cott but he slugged it back anyway as he wandered restlessly up and down the platform. He didn’t particularly want to smoke, either, but he did that, too.
He knew he looked terrible—he had slept in his clothes last night, although sleep was a loose term for the twitching of his semiconscious body on the floor of the van—so he tried to keep his gaze away from people. When he had had enough of wandering, he found a space away from the benches and the waiting rooms and the information boards, put his hands in his pockets and stood. The only place to look was the floor.
When the train eventually trundled in, forty minutes late, he hung back. It came to a wheezy stop, not that he could see much of it through the ungracious scrabble of travelers fighting to get on and off. He stayed where he was, making no attempt to move forward, still staring at the dirty concrete platform. People tutted him, barged him, and thought rude things about him as they piled on, but he was oblivious. He didn’t give a damn whether he was an obstacle or not.
When he looked up, he realized he was hallucinating. The woman sitting in the window seat that had come to rest at precisely the point on the platform where he had chosen to stand looked just like Emmy. She had pink sleeves round denim knees and her feet were on the upholstery. Her hair was hanging in a glossy curtain and she was dreaming about something.
Niall wanted to touch her, to feel a warm hand or a soft cheek or a curve through the cloth of her jeans, and because he was so tired and thought it wasn’t really happening anyway, he tried. He reached out and put his hand against the cold window. Slowly, amazingly, another hand on the other side came up to join it. A hand with a hair tie around the wrist, hidden in a collection of silver bangles. A hand with a crooked little finger.
The explosive collision of their mutual recognition catapulted them both into action. He ran toward the door, which had already been shut by the guard in preparation for pulling out, and she scrambled in panic out of her seat, over her bag and into the fray. He yanked the metal handle, jumped on, and by the time he had slammed it behind him, there she was. Emmy.
“Are you okay?” she asked. His hair was sticking up in clumps for want of a good wash, but his brand of personal hygiene, or the lack of it, was again immediately familiar. It might even have been love at second sight.
“I will be,” he said.
And they returned to her carriage and sat in silence with their eyes closed and their hands tightly in each other’s, wondering what it was about trains and which single thing it was that had conspired to save them.
* * *
At Bodinnick, Sita lay on the lawn, enjoying the feeling of the sun-warmed blanket beneath her and the burble of family life around her.
She watched the house martins dipping and diving in the brilliant blue sky, catching their food midair. Their fledgings were learning to fly, taking tentative excursions from their mud homes in the eaves, returning often, presumably to rest. Soon the colony would leave, without fuss.
That was the way to do it, she thought, thinking of the human chaos of the last few weeks. Will we still be here to miss you? she wondered.
In the distance, at the pond’s edge, a group of mallards walked in file—a drake with its unmistakable green head and white neck ring, followed by his two adoring ducks. Their nests in the bamboo and reeds had been under constant attack from foxes and badgers. Asha had cried over the smashed eggs and sticky feathers, and yet still the ducks walked, heads up, expecting.
“It’s nature,” she’d told her daughter. “It’s what happens.”
She watched her own young, letting the soothing sound of their bike wheels on the gravel drive wash over her, not unlike waves over pebbles. From another corner of the garden, she could hear the sound of Jonathan hammering, mending a garden bench.
In the cushions next to her, Lila’s chubby little hand reached out and picked up a toy cup, her fat wrist rotating in the air. Simple pleasures, Sita thought. Simple lives. Kind of.
The phone rang inside the house.
“Can you get that, darling?” she shouted to Jay. “You’re faster than I am.”
“I will,” Asha cried. “I will.”
Sita pulled herself up and started to walk inside after them, expecting it to be Emmy.
“It’s James Culworthy-King,” Jay said on the steps, trying not to feel as if he had just drunk a pint of lead. “He’s got someone else interested. He wants to know when the bus is going.”
The sound of hammering stopped. Lila dropped her cup.
Jonathan walked over to his family and the four of them stood by the oil patch, in the space where the wheels had once been.
“Well,” he said quietly, “what do you think we should tell him?”
Sita, Jay and Asha looked at him hopefully.
“Go on. I’m listening.”
“I think we should tell him it’s still here,” Jay said.
“And another one has come, too,” Asha suggested.
“A peace convoy,” Sita said. “To celebrate the summer solstice.”
They trooped into the house together, and when they came back out a minute later they looked at the blanket on the lawn and saw that Lila was sitting up, straight-backed, perfectly balanced, without cushions, all on her own.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
&nb
sp; Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Copyright
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
EGGSHELL DAYS. Copyright © 2002 by Rebecca Gregson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
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First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd.
First U.S. Edition: August 2003
eISBN 9781250089908
First eBook edition: June 2015