‘Hi,’ replied Pip. ‘What can I get you both?’
‘Tea,’ they chorused. ‘And biscuits.’
They spent the first hour or so catching up. Ted’s life was much the same as it had ever been. He was still living with his mother, still wheeling and dealing like he always had done. Evelyn couldn’t imagine him ever retiring. He seemed so full of life. His smile dropped, though, when she told him how she had spent the time.
‘Oh, Evie,’ he kept saying. ‘I feel so bad. If I’d only known. I’d have been there like a shot. I assumed you’d got married or some such. I never thought of you all alone in that big old house.’
‘Don’t you blame yourself,’ she said. ‘Not for a moment. I brought it all on myself. But I’m out now, and raring to go.’
‘Good job you found her then, Pip Appleby,’ said Ted. ‘Sounds like you pulled her out of the doldrums.’
Evelyn turned to give her a grateful smile, but Pip was shaking her head.
‘Actually, Ted,’ she said. ‘I think it was the other way around.’
Ted looked from one of them to the other. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose it matters who did what. The main thing is that you’re both here now.’
And Evelyn had to agree with him.
51
Friday 21st June 2019
Midsummer’s Day. Not quite the first of January, but halfway through the year seems like an appropriate place to start, with half the months finished and half still to come.
I found this diary on the bargain shelf in the stationer’s. I hadn’t really been looking for one – it hadn’t crossed my mind to start writing a diary again – but it spoke to me. It’s not quite the same as all the others, a little taller and thinner, but I decided that didn’t matter. In many ways it’s a good thing. The shape of the diary reflects a change in me and my life and when I look at them, all lined up on the shelf in my now not-that-messy study, I will know at a glance where the old life ended and the new one began.
So, yesterday Pip and I took the train to London. It’s a big leap from a wander on the pier to a train ride to London but I took it in my stride, and I was proud of myself. I have to confess to being more than a little nervous, not so much about the trip itself but about meeting Ted again after all these years. When Pip first told me that she’d tracked him down, I wasn’t sure meeting up was a good idea. My old agent Julian used to say, never look back unless you’re planning to go that way. Well, I’m definitely not. This is a fresh start for me. I know I’m an old lady, but age is just a number – you’re as young as you feel and all other appropriate clichés.
Anyway, in the end I decided that no harm could possibly come from a brief stroll down Memory Lane with dear old Ted.
And I am delighted to report that he was just the same as ever. Older, of course – aren’t we all? – but it wasn’t hard to find the man I once knew so well in the lines and creases of his face. Our café is no more, but that was all right. Things change and move on all the time. That’s just how it should be. We said we’d keep in touch, Ted and me. I think we will. I told him about wanting to get a part in a show in Southwold, and he said he’d move heaven and earth to get up to see me. Pip says she’ll come, too, although I’m sure she’ll be very busy when she gets back into the swing of things in London.
I’ve bought myself an iPad. Evelyn Mountcastle enters the twenty-first century. Nicholas said he couldn’t see the point and that the old computer he gave me works perfectly well. But I told him that if I wanted to FaceTime Pip then I needed the right equipment. I think he worries for what’s left of his inheritance!
After we’d left Ted, we went to see Pip’s new house. She has an apartment on the second floor of a huge Victorian townhouse in Hackney. It’s not that far from where I lived with Brenda on Kentish Town Road, although the place has changed so much I didn’t realise where I was until the taxi had already flown past the front door.
As we were exploring, there was a knock on the door. Pip opened it and there was a woman on the doorstep holding a lemon drizzle cake and a pot plant. Her name is Saffron, she’s a midwife and she lives in the flat downstairs. Pip was delighted to have neighbours who bothered to find out who she was. I think she’s going to be just fine there.
We came home together but Pip will be moving in next weekend. I shall miss her more than she knows, but I’ll be up in town much more regularly from now on so it will be easy enough to get together.