There was a moment when she tried to be strong, but then she burst into tears and clung to him, and for a long time they held each other close, her hot cheek wet against his; he was almost moved to tears himself.

At last she looked up at him, flushed and unhappy, her eyelashes stuck together with crying.

She said, “I don’t know what to do. It’s all so frightening.”

He shrugged, “I know. I don’t know what to do either. But I’m doing whatever I can.”

She swallowed, and then she said, “You won’t mind me asking this, will you? I know it sounds awful, but I have to ask it.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Well,” she said uncertainly, “you’re not—you’re not going mad are you? You don’t have madness in your family?”

He couldn’t help smiling. “Not that I know of. I think my grandfather used to fly Chinese kites out on the point, and got himself a name for being quite an eccentric, but real madness…”

“Not even way back? I couldn’t bear it if Toby—”

He squeezed her close. “Listen, I’m not going mad, and neither is Toby, and neither is anyone else. We just have one of those weird situations that nobody quite understands. It’s like flying saucers, Doctor Crowder told me, or ghosts. All we have to do is find out what it is, and when we know, we’ll be fine.”

Susan dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s been a strain, that’s all. I was sitting there thinking that you must have had a mad cousin in your dim and distant past, and that you and Toby were paying the price for it. I’m real sorry, Neil. I mean it.”

Neil kissed her. “I’m glad you came straight out and asked. If I’d have been you, I would have been thinking the same thing. I’m happy to say, though, that there hasn’t been anybody in my family’s illustrious history who—”

He paused. She stopped in the middle of drying her tears and looked up at him. He gave her a quick, uncertain smile.

“What were you saying?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It seems ridiculous. I guess I’m allowing this thing to get under my skin.”

“You mustn’t, honey,” she said gently. “We’ll work it out somehow.”

“Sure,” he told her, but he didn’t feel very convinced. “Now, I’d better get upstairs and finish off that wardrobe.”

“Do you really have to?” she asked him. “It seems such a pity, just breaking it up for the sake of it.”

“Would you sleep with it in the room?” asked Neil. “Would you let Toby sleep with it in the room?”