She knocked on the door, and this time heard the bolt being pulled back almost at once, as if Evelyn had been waiting on the other side for her to arrive.
Inside, the house was still dark, but Pip thought it smelled a little less fusty than it had done the previous week. Perhaps Evelyn had prepared a little for her visit. Pip liked this idea because it suggested that Evelyn was as enthusiastic about their meeting as she was and had also been looking forward to it. Maybe she wanted to make a favourable impression on Pip, too. The idea made Pip feel a little bit special, like she mattered to Evelyn, and that gave her a warm feeling in her stomach along with the butterflies.
Evelyn ushered her into the same room as before, though, before Pip could see any other part of the house. There had been slight improvements in there as well. The curtains were already open, and the carpet and upholstery had been hoovered after a fashion, although it hadn’t made a huge impact on the overall feeling of neglect that still hung around the room. Still, Pip thought, it must show something.
Evelyn herself, however, seemed much the same as she had been before. Whilst she was considerably less suspicious than she had been at their first meeting, she was still guarded, and her smiles were cautious and short-lived. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the obvious attempts to clean the house for her visit, Pip might have thought she wasn’t welcome, but she tried not to feel too disheartened by this. Just because Evelyn didn’t share her excitement didn’t mean she wasn’t pleased to see her, and the most important thing was that she had been invited back when there was no real need, the diary having already been returned. Pip would just have to make the most of the visit and ingratiate herself with Evelyn as much as she could so she would come to trust her, over time.
When Pip was settled in the same slightly sticky seat she had taken previously, Evelyn said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea? It was very remiss of me not to offer last time, but you did rather catch me on the hop.’
It was a small step, no more than a gesture really, but Pip was delighted.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Can I help?’
Evelyn put up a blocking hand, signalling clearly that help would not be required. ‘No, no,’ she said firmly. ‘I may be older than you, but I’m perfectly capable of boiling a kettle and carrying a tray.’
Something in her tone sounded a little offended, but Pip ignored it. An offer of help was just that, and if Evelyn chose to give it more significance then that was her issue. Pip was beginning to wonder if Evelyn wasn’t quite as old as she had looked on her last visit.
She went out to make the tea, leaving Pip on her own. Now that she was here as an invited guest, it felt more appropriate to have a good look around and take in her surroundings. She stood up and took a little tour about the room. As well as the two armchairs, a matching uninviting couch and the china display cabinet, there was also a mahogany bookshelf. It contained an ancient Encyclopaedia Britannica , and leather-and gilt-bound copies of what looked like the complete works of Dickens and Shakespeare. The leather, which might once have been crimson, had faded to a dull ox-blood colour and was stiff and brittle. Pip pulled Great Expectations off the shelf and opened it carefully. The pages were tissue-paper thin and the font so tiny it was hard to imagine anyone could ever read it, but the book had a well-handled feel to it. Someone had loved it once. She slipped it back into its space.
The fireplace was squat and ugly, tiled in buttercream-coloured tiles and with a large hearth tiled in the same. One of the tiles had cracked, spoiling the whole; something heavy had been dropped on it, and Pip thought she could imagine the fuss that would have been made at such carelessness. This didn’t feel like the kind of house where cracked tiles would be acceptable, and yet it hadn’t been replaced. If the china in the cabinet was anything to go by, it wouldn’t have been through a lack of funds, so maybe the broken tile had been left on purpose as a constant reminder of someone’s mistake. Evelyn’s, perhaps?
On top of the display cabinet were two black-and-white photographs, each in austere black frames. The first was of a couple on their wedding day, or at least she assumed it was their wedding day. The woman was carrying a bunch of roses, but her dress was neither long nor white and not at all what Pip would think of as a wedding dress, and neither she nor the assumed groom were smiling. The second was of three children, a boy with blond curls in a smart sailor sweater and two little girls in pinafores. Pip looked more closely. The smallest one must be Evelyn, Pip thought, scanning for any feature that looked familiar, but finding nothing. The little girl beamed out at the camera, her head tipped coquettishly to one side. She looked like a proper character, much as Evelyn had described Scarlet. Then she turned her focus to the older girl – Joan, maybe? Pip searched her face for the cruelty that Evelyn’s diary had hinted at, but could see no sign of it. She looked like a perfectly ordinary child, if a little solemn in comparison to her sister.