Emily's Penny Dreadful by Bill Nagelkerke Page A

Emily.
“Sibbie said I might turn out like Uncle Raymond. Does that mean I
get up your nose, too?”
      “ You’re nothing at
all like Uncle Raymond!” said Dad.
      He kissed the top of
Emily’s head and hurried off to work.
      Mum winked at Emily.
“Don’t look so worried,” she
    said. “Your Dad and Uncle Raymond manage to
get
    on well enough if they have
to. And they will have to, for the next little while at least.”
      “ Am I like Uncle Raymond?” Emily
asked her mother. 
      “ You’re very
different, believe me,” her mother answered.
    *
    Dad wasn’t home from work yet when Uncle
Raymond and Auntie Dot arrived.
      Mum and Auntie Dot,
as well as Sibbie, sat down at the kitchen table and got talking
straight away.
      Uncle Raymond and
Emily stood back from the huddle. They both looked grumpy. Uncle
Raymond had something clenched under one armpit. He seemed to have
put on even more weight since Emily had seen him last.
      “ She likes to
pretend she’s grown up,” Emily whispered to Uncle
Raymond.
      “ Who?”
      “ My sister. But she
isn’t. Grown up, I mean.”
    “ Of course she isn’t,” said
Uncle Raymond. “I suppose she suffers from delusions of
grandeur?”
      “ Yes,” said
Emily.
    Mum paused midsentence. “Why don’t you show
Uncle Raymond the room he and Auntie Dot are going to have,” she
told Emily.
      “ My room,” said
Emily.
    “ There’s really no need to
show me,” said Uncle Raymond. “I still know my way
around.”
      “ I’d better,” said
Emily. “I have to explain what you’re allowed and not allowed to
move around in my room.”
      Uncle Raymond
grunted. “Very well.” He pulled a face.
      “ Don’t do that!”
Emily said. “I might grizzle and cry.”
    “ What are you talking
about?” said Uncle Raymond.
      “ You made me grizzle
and cry when I was a baby,” Emily explained.
      “ Did I? I don’t
remember. All babies grizzle and cry, surely?”
    “ According to Sibbie, you
pulled funny faces, that’s why,” said Emily. “Just like you did
now. Except that one wasn’t funny. It was an ‘I don’t like that’
sort of face.”
      “ I wasn’t pulling a
face,” Uncle Raymond said,
    immediately pulling another one. He followed
Emily down the hall. “Was I?” he asked.
    Emily turned round and
nodded.
      “ Hmm,” said Uncle
Raymond.
     

Chapter Three
     
    Emily stopped outside the door. “Here is
it,” she said.
      “ Thank you,” replied
Uncle Raymond, in the careful and precise way that Emily remembered
so well from the funeral. “As I told your mother, I remember the
layout of this house from our last visit. I presume nothing has
changed since then. The rooms have not shifted position, have they?
Presumably the hallway still runs north to south? The French doors
still open outwards and close inwards? The windows are still made
of glass? The yappy little fox terrier next door is still barking
mad? In fact, is that what I hear now?”
      Emily looked sternly at Uncle Raymond. “That’s definitely not funny,”
she said. “Bertie is my most favourite dog. He’s teaching me to
bark.”
      “ I
wasn’t being funny,” said Uncle Raymond. “Teaching you to do what ?”
      “ Bark. But everything has changed,” said Emily. “This is my room
now.”
      Uncle Raymond
sighed. “You said so just a moment before, somewhat emphatically.
There’s no need to repeat yourself.”
      “ But I have to say
it more than once,” Emily pointed out. “If I don’t, you might end
up staying forever. In that case, I’ll never get my room
back.”
      “ I see,” said Uncle
Raymond. “Forever isn’t even a remote possibility, let me assure
you.”
    Emily nodded. “Last time
this was Sibbie’s room as well as mine,” she said. “That was before
Dad turned the sunroom into a bedroom for her. He finished only two
weeks ago last Saturday. That’s how long this room’s been
completely mine. Not long at