The space on the shelf that Nicholas must have cleared was to the right of her diaries. Surely, he wouldn’t have swept up the final one as he removed the old paperbacks? But it appeared he had. In a panic now, Evelyn hunted the floor for the box he might have used to pack the books into. It could still be here. He had said he would take them to the charity shop, but perhaps he hadn’t yet got round to it.
But there was no box. The box, the books and the missing diary were nowhere to be seen.
Evelyn felt sick. Of all the diaries, that one was the most precious to her. It couldn’t be gone. And yet it appeared that it was.
Evelyn threw herself out of the office and into her bedroom to retrieve her mobile phone. She had to ring Nicholas. Wherever he had taken that box to, he had to get it back.
28
Pip pushed open the heavy wooden door, stepped into the library and was immediately transported back in time. She hadn’t been aware that the library had a smell, but now it hit her so hard she wondered how she’d not noticed it before, given how much time she had spent in there as a girl. There was that familiar scent of old papers, but there were other smells as well – decades of beeswax rubbed into the shelves, the musty dampness that sea salt added to old buildings and a slightly unsavoury odour of unwashed humans. The combination flew Pip back to her childhood as fast as any chart hit of the time might have done.
She was delighted to see the old place didn’t look any different. There were a couple of extra tables in the centre of the room that now bore computers rather than the daily newspapers, but other than that it could still have been the 1990s.
Pip stood on the threshold and took in what she saw, feeling strangely nostalgic. She had been in far grander seats of learning than this one over the years, and yet there was something intangibly special about here. A lump formed in her throat, but she swallowed it back down. After the previous evening’s experience, she didn’t dare start crying again – who knew when she might stop?
She squared her shoulders and headed towards the wooden desk where the books had been stamped back in her day. Now it would all be done by the swipe of a smart card, but that would be less magical. There was nothing quite like the sound of that stamp.
A man was standing at the desk and for a moment Pip thought it might be Mr Lancaster, who had been the librarian when she was a girl, but when he looked up his face was unfamiliar.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked kindly.
‘Do you still keep microfiches of the Southwold Gazette here?’ she asked.
‘We do indeed,’ he said with a smile that suggested that not many people asked him for such items and it would be a librarian’s pleasure to dig them out for her. ‘Do you know which year you’re interested in?’
‘1983, please,’ she replied quickly. ‘From August to December.’
‘I imagine that’s before you were born,’ the librarian commented, and then immediately looked a little awkward, as if this were too personal a statement to have made, but Pip smiled broadly back at him and nodded.
‘Just give me one moment and I’ll locate them for you,’ he said, and disappeared towards the stairs.
Pip entertained herself by flicking through the tourist information leaflets that were sitting in a rack on the table. There were so many interesting-looking things to do nearby. It was funny, when you lived in a place, how few of them you ever thought about visiting. She checked herself. She didn’t live here. She was just passing through. She would be back in London before she knew it.
‘It’s Philippa, isn’t it?’ a voice said at her back. ‘Philippa Appleby. Please tell me that I’m right or I’m going to feel awfully foolish.’
Pip knew the voice at once. ‘Mr Lancaster!’ she said, spinning round to look at him.
The librarian had seemed ancient to her when she had been a girl, although she supposed he hadn’t been much over forty. He looked unchanged now except that his thick dark hair was grey. Even his glasses were the same: unflattering gold frames in a retro shape.
‘Well I never,’ he said, holding out a hand for her to shake. ‘How very lovely to see you. And you must call me Keith. You’re not a schoolgirl any more, you know.’
Pip thought there was more chance of hell freezing over than of her addressing Mr Lancaster by his first name, but she grinned at him.
‘How are you?’ she asked. ‘Are you still working here? I did wonder when I came in, but I thought that . . .’
‘I’d be far too decrepit to still be holding down a job?’ he finished for her.