As Pip read Evelyn’s words, her cheeks were slick with tears. Since the diary had opened her emotions back up, it seemed as if there would be no closing them again. She wept without pausing, months and months’ worth of stopped-up tears. She wasn’t only crying for Scarlet and Evelyn. She was also, finally, crying for herself.
The parallels between herself and Evelyn were undeniable. Both had had their lives snatched from under them in one cruel, ill-fated second. They had both been merrily going about their business with no inkling of what was about to happen when an outside force had struck them and changed everything irreparably.
Now, though, Pip was starting to see that there were some differences in the two situations. The boy had died under the wheels of her car – that was undeniable – but, despite the guilt that tortured her night and day, she knew that objectively she was not at fault. The witness, the police and the coroner had all agreed. It had been a terrible accident. No one could have prevented what had happened, except the child himself.
But after her trip to the library, Pip now had a slightly different view about Scarlet’s death. The child had been left on her own long enough to find her way out of the house and to the neighbour’s pond. She was only three, and so surely some blame had to attach to that lack of supervision. Yes, it was a terrible accident, but it had been preventable simply by discharging a normal parental duty of care, and Pip found it hard not to place that at Evelyn’s door. She had been the child’s mother and her sole carer. Some of what happened surely had to be her fault.
Yet again Pip thought that that kind of slapdash parenting just didn’t tally with the view of Evelyn she had built up through her reading. There was no way the Evelyn of the diary would leave her child unattended at all, let alone in a place where she might be in such mortal peril; and yet, according to the news report, that was exactly what she had done. If that were true, Pip couldn’t help but judge Evelyn and find her lacking.
The diary, however, seemed to tell another story.
Wednesday 14th September
I can’t believe how Joan is just carrying on as if nothing has happened. I caught her hanging out her washing and whistling this morning. Whistling! Like she didn’t have a care in the world. Whilst my baby lies cold in the ground. I screamed at her. I told her she should show some respect. I said that this was all her fault and if it hadn’t been for her then Scarlet would still be here, but she said she didn’t see how that could be true because Scarlet was my child. How could she be to blame when S was my responsibility? But it was her fault. I know it and she knows it. I don’t know exactly how, but I know she hasn’t told me the truth.
I can no longer be in the same room as her. Just seeing her face turns my stomach. She cooks extra for me when she makes her own food and leaves it on a plate in the oven, but when she’s left the kitchen, I go in there and throw it all away. I cannot eat anything that she’s prepared. I would rather starve.
It was clear Evelyn blamed Joan, but Pip couldn’t work out why. She scoured her words for some clue, but found nothing. The relationship between the two women had been strained before Scarlet’s death, but afterwards animosity had turned to hatred, and it showed no sign of abating as time went on. Pip began to wonder whether it was actually a symptom of Evelyn’s grief. Perhaps she was transferring guilt from herself to her sister to make the pain easier to bear. That made sense. Blame and denial were two of the recognised stages of grief.
Or could it be that there was more to Scarlet’s death than met the eye? Despite the tragedy of the story, Pip couldn’t help but be a little intrigued, and this was also the point where the parallel paths between herself and Evelyn diverged. Pip was crippled by guilt for what she had done. It haunted her day and night, and had destroyed everything she had built. And yet there was no such remorse in Evelyn’s thoughts. It was grief that had blighted her life, not guilt.
Pip read on, becoming increasingly frustrated that she was getting such a limited snapshot of the situation, but at the same time feeling Evelyn’s grief as if it were her own child who had been killed. Tears continued to pour down her cheeks as she absorbed Evelyn’s pain.
Thursday 27th October
Two months and ten days. The days keep ticking by, but I stay still, frozen in time, like my baby. Each morning I wake and know I have to live another day without her. Actually, I’m not really living. I breathe, yes, and go about the bare necessities to stay alive, but that is not the same. This is no way to exist. If I could, I would go to S in a heartbeat. But I can’t, because if I take my own life then J will have won, and I cannot accept that. So I trudge on, making my way through each day in the best way I can. I am broken beyond repair. I can’t imagine a time when I will be anything but entirely destroyed. There is no purpose to my life without my darling Scarlet.