‘No! Of course not,’ protested Pip, although that was precisely what she had thought. She felt her cheeks betray her.
‘I’m very well, thank you, my dear. And I just work part-time these days. Things are done differently but I try to keep up. Don’t want to be accused of being an old fuddy-duddy.’
He smiled, and Pip saw that his teeth were almost the same beige as his jumper. Then his expression changed, and he put a hand out to touch her gently on her arm.
‘And I was so sorry to hear of your trouble,’ he said.
It was all Pip could do not to roll her eyes. Was there anybody in this whole town who didn’t know about ‘her trouble’？ The evidence suggested not, but they all meant well, and their wishes were kindly given.
‘Thank you,’ she replied.
She was saved from having to say anything else by the arrival of the first man carrying a cardboard storage box with ‘Southwold Gazette – 1983’ written on its side in black marker pen.
‘Here you are,’ he said as he approached.
‘Now then, Ian, this young lady has been coming to this library since she was knee-high to a grasshopper. I could barely keep up with her. She was always in here, changing her books and ordering things in from Ipswich. But it didn’t go to waste, because she went on to be a barrister in London. That’s right, isn’t it, Philippa?’ He looked to her for confirmation, looking almost as proud as if he had fathered her himself.
‘That’s right,’ said Pip as she reached for the box of microfiches, anxious not to get into a discussion about her more recent history. ‘Are the readers still in the back room?’ she asked, cocking her head in that direction.
‘Oh yes,’ laughed Mr Lancaster. ‘We don’t like change for change’s sake around here.’
Pip saw him eyeing the box curiously, but she wanted to talk about what she was looking for even less than she wanted to discuss the accident.
‘Thanks for your help,’ she said dismissively. ‘And lovely to see you again, Mr Lancaster.’
She could feel his eyes boring into the back of her head as she walked away.
In the back room, she picked the machine in the corner that faced outwards so that she could see people approaching, and set the box down on the desk. Then she sat down, flicked the light on and took the first tape out. The label read June 1983. That was too early. She put it back, skipped past July and pulled August out. Then she fitted it into the machine and began to scroll through the pages.
According to the diary, Scarlet must have died on Wednesday the seventeenth, or at least that was the first day when Evelyn hadn’t written anything. It didn’t take long to locate the story. As Pip had assumed, it was front-page news.
Child dies in drowning tragedy
A local family is in mourning after a devastating accident last Wednesday. Three-year-old Scarlet Mountcastle wandered away from her family home and was found drowned in a shallow pond in a neighbouring garden a short time afterwards. The child’s mother, Evelyn Mountcastle, an actress, was born and bred in the town. Miss Mountcastle, who lives with her sister Joan in the family home, is said to be too distraught to speak to our reporters but we understand that she has been helping the police with their enquiries into the death of the child. Miss Mountcastle appeared in minor roles in several television series in the 1970s before settling back in the town with her daughter. A neighbour told our reporter, ‘Scarlet was a delightful child, always smiling. She was never on her own and her mother totally doted on her. It’s hard to see how this could have happened.’ When asking about Scarlet’s father, our reporter was told that ‘there was no sign of him on the scene. The Mountcastles always kept themselves to themselves.’ A private service for family only will be held at St Edmund’s.
Pip realised that she had been holding her breath as she read, and let it out in a long sigh. Even though she knew Scarlet had died, it was still difficult to see it written there in black and white. And the story confused her. It seemed to make no sense. The Evelyn she knew from reading the diaries would never have let Scarlet out of her sight, let alone leave her to wander around alone for long enough to drown. There had to be more to it than that. Scarlet was only three. Pip knew parents were more relaxed with their children in the eighties than they were nowadays, giving them a greater freedom to roam and find their own fun, but surely basic concerns for a child’s safety were the same. Three was far too little to be wandering about unaccompanied.
Pip ran her eyes over the story for a second time, but nothing new sprang out at her. She sat back in her chair and contemplated the ceiling. It didn’t appear to have seen any paint for many a year and was now more of a cream colour than the white it no doubt had been originally. A water leak at some time had caused a series of brown spots in one corner that looked a little like a map of the UK.