Perhaps that had already happened? It had been so long since she had spent any time in company that she had no idea whether she was still capable of it, although, going by the time she spent with Nicholas, she feared she had quite lost the knack. In fact, she quite enjoyed presenting herself as grumpy and difficult. It was a role she could play easily, barely having to delve into her actress’s box of tricks at all, and it served to keep people in general at bay, which suited her mood these days. But Nicholas was family, and she should be kinder to him.
Finally, she reached the landing. She pushed against the door to the office, but it resisted her, no doubt prevented from opening fully by a pile of something or other on the other side. Evelyn shouldered the door as firmly as she dared – broken bones were to be avoided at all costs. It gave a little, but she had to turn herself sideways to slink her way in.
Once she was in, the room didn’t look nearly as bad as she had feared. In fact, she wasn’t sure what Nicholas had been making such a fuss about. Yes, there were books piled on every surface, but she could still see the fading red medallions on the Persian rug.
It was clear someone had been in there relatively recently, however. There were gaps in the dust where items had been picked up and put down elsewhere. It looked a little like a stage set, which pleased her in a perverse kind of way.
Then she turned and took in the shelves that lined the wall behind the door, and her heart stopped beating. Where were the books? She stood, mouth gaping, and stared at the newly created space on the shelf. A run of about three feet was completely bare; not a single book was left. Evelyn swayed slightly, then pushed her way through to the shelf, not caring what she knocked over in her rush to get there.
She had no idea which books were missing, but that was of no importance. Books could be replaced if necessary. It was what else had been sitting safe and sound next to them that was crucial.
Her heart was thumping so hard in her chest now that she could hear it in her ears. She stumbled to the shelf, hardly daring to look for fear of what she might see, but when she did, there they all were, lined up neatly in date order. Her diaries. Evelyn had been an inveterate diary-keeper since childhood. Growing up in a house where she didn’t fit in with the other occupants, her diary had provided a welcome escape from the torments of day-to-day life. Back then, she had kept them safely hidden away from her family, never quite trusting any of them not to read what she wrote and then mock her for it.
Of course, there had been no need to hide the diaries in recent years, and so she had decided to place them on the shelf. Even though she didn’t read them often, their mere presence reminded her of the life she had had before. And there they had sat, untouched, for over a decade. It had been too unbearably painful to open their covers and read the most intimate thoughts of the person she had been before, and yet it was impossible to throw them away. There was too much of herself woven into her words. Each diary recorded a part of her life before – growing up in this very house, then her escape to London and the wonderful years she spent there, and finally the miracle of living with her beautiful baby girl. Before . . . Evelyn had left them all untouched on the shelf.
But then gradually, as the years ticked by, she had begun to feel that she might be ready to open these little snapshots into her life and peek in. She had started tentatively with her own childhood and the years spent growing up with Peter and Joan. Her words reminded her of how little she had had in common with her family. She had always been different to them, and consequently, in her own mind at least, a little bit special, from the moment she was old enough to develop a sense of self.
Feeling emboldened, she had continued working through them. The London years had been fun to revisit. She had enjoyed rereading the tales of life in the shabby little flat on Kentish Town Road, and Brenda, and then dear Ted.
And then finally, she had turned to the volumes that catalogued her life with Scarlet. There were so few of those in comparison to the rest, and she had cherished every entry, lingering over them as you might a fine wine, savouring every sentence and the memories each one evoked. By the end, she had even been able to reread the last one. There had been no more diaries after 1983. What would have been the point?
But where was it? Evelyn could see at once that it wasn’t in its place. The 1983 volume was different to the others and so easy to spot. Rather than the plain business diaries she had favoured before, it had daisies on the cover because Scarlet had been with her when she’d bought it, and she had let her choose. But now it was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes flicked backward and forward as she became more and more desperate, but she couldn’t see it.