As a little girl, Emma Rowlands had loved the toy shell house…

It belonged to her doctor, who had promised it to her as a reward for being brave.

Emma is always brave.

Now, at a time of uncertainty and despondency in her life, she discovered he had left her not the toy house she had asked for, but his own home.

With her daughter in India and her divorce finalised, Emma will need the old doctor’s gift more than ever.

But while Emma is blossoming her mother, Adela, is fading.

Like a terrible eclipse, Adela begins to watch herself vanish into her daughter’s shadow.

Weighed down by her husband’s death and a secret she knows she can’t tell, Adela becomes more and more distant from her daughter.

Emma will need all her strength to fix up the old doctor’s house and chase out its demons.

She won the house for being brave and she will need that bravery more than ever…

Touch and Go is an emotional tale that explores what it means to come into our own and what family is truly worth.

Elizabeth Berridge (December 1919 – December 2009) was a novelist and critic. Born in London, where she was partly educated here, she later moved to Geneva. Berridge won the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award, in 1964 for Across The Common.