‘How about two o’clock?’ Evelyn suggested, and Pip nodded.
‘That would be perfect,’ she said.
34
Evelyn closed the front door and then stood with her back against it, her head resting on the flaking paintwork. She could hear the muffled tones of a siren somewhere outside and it sent a shudder through her whole body, as it always did, even now. Her hand was still clutching the diary and she raised it to her lips and kissed the daisy cover lightly. Then she held it to her heart as she considered what had just happened.
A visitor was not what she had been expecting today, and certainly not one as interesting as Philippa Rose Appleby. Evelyn had liked her. Even though she had clearly come with an agenda, the nature of which was still a little unclear, she had been prepared to talk honestly. It can’t have been easy for her, confessing to being – well, there was no other way of putting it – to being a snob. She hadn’t believed her name was posh enough and so had simply ditched it in order to fit in.
Evelyn wasn’t surprised her parents had been put out. She tried to imagine how she would have felt if Scarlet had done the same thing to her, but it was a thought she couldn’t process. Scarlet had still been largely unformed when her little life had come to a halt. Picturing what she might or might not have thought about her origins was nigh-on impossible. Evelyn couldn’t conceive of her daughter not wanting to be known as Scarlet; it was such a fabulous name, particularly back in 1979. But then what was wrong with being called Philippa? Or Pip, for that matter? Absolutely nothing. Whatever had been going on for Philippa Rose when she left her sleepy Suffolk town for the bright lights of London, it had nothing to do with having the wrong name.
Evelyn made her way into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. There was another reason why she had been so taken with her visitor, she thought as she sat at the table, her hands wrapped around the steaming mug. Philippa Rose had wanted something different from what was expected of her. Her clear vocation hadn’t matched her parents’ ideas of what her life should be, and that had caused ructions within her family home.
It all had such a familiar ring to it. Peter and Joan had been happy to stand inside the box their parents had built for them, but Evelyn had not. For her, a dull office job felt like a prison sentence. Keeping her in Southwold had been like trapping a tiger in a camper van and then parking it on the drive where it could see the road to freedom. Every time she had switched on the television, she saw actresses doing precisely what she wanted to do, but in order to have this for herself she’d had to defy her parents and flee. In this regard Evelyn supposed that she and her visitor were very much alike.
That wasn’t everything, though, Evelyn was sure. There was something more than just a need to break away and follow their own path that the two women had in common. Even if she hadn’t managed to identify exactly what the connection was, she had definitely felt it. There was something in Philippa Rose’s past that didn’t sit straight with what she had told her so far, something shadowy and unspoken. There had to be, or else what was she doing living here and working in a charity shop, rather than being a barrister in London? Something must have dragged her back. She had mentioned both her parents so it was unlikely to be a recent bereavement, but nonetheless she seemed to be carrying a melancholic burden deep inside her. Evelyn would be prepared to put money on there being something heavy in her heart. She could see it in Pip’s eyes. It was something Evelyn saw in her own eyes every time she looked in the mirror.
That was why she’d invited the girl back. She wanted to get to the bottom of her story, and she felt, given the right encouragement, that Philippa Rose would open up to her. Evelyn might even be able to help.
It was a risky strategy, though. It was crystal clear that she had read the diary. Why else would she manufacture all that guff about wanting to hear about Evelyn’s acting past? No. Our Philippa Rose was trying to find out what had happened here. She was fishing.
Evelyn opened the diary and flicked the pages over until she came to the relevant entry. Wednesday 30th November. There had always been a risk in writing it down, but the risk had always felt infinitesimally small. After all, who was going to read her diary? There had been no chance that it would be opened by anyone but her; not until she died, at least, and by then it wouldn’t matter.
But that had been before Nicholas had done his mucking out of his Aunt Evelyn. Evelyn rolled her eyes and sighed. The boy had meant well, but really, he could have no idea of the potential damage he had done. And of course, sod’s law dictated it had to be that diary he sent to the shop. If it had been any of the others . . . Well, the 1979 one might have caused some eyes to stretch, but the dangers of the casting couch were hardly shocking news. Hers was just another story in a very long chapter. Reading about what had befallen her might have prompted a few lines in the local paper, nothing more. But the 1983 diary? That was a horse of a different colour altogether.