Just then there was a loud crash, and the bell-like sound of something smashing on a hard floor rang through the house. Pip jumped, and her heart immediately began to pound. She still couldn’t deal with loud, sudden noises. Maybe she would always struggle with them.
She took a deep breath to steady herself then called out into the silence. ‘Is everything okay?’ When there was no reply, she rushed from the room to try and trace the sound, running through various disaster scenarios in her head as she went.
The kitchen appeared to be at the end of the corridor and Pip headed in that direction, calling out again. This time she got a reply.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine. No need to panic,’ snapped Evelyn as Pip entered the kitchen. Pip was relieved to see she was on her feet, but she was standing in a puddle of tea, the teapot lying in pieces around her. ‘Damn,’ Evelyn tutted. ‘How careless of me. What a mess I’ve made.’
However, as Pip approached, she saw that the broken teapot was almost insignificant next to the catastrophe that was the rest of kitchen. Every surface was piled high with stuff. Pip couldn’t really be more specific about what it was. Most of it was unidentifiable clutter. It didn’t smell any worse than the rest of the house, so it probably wasn’t stale food, although there seemed to be a lot of cartons. In one spot, a pile of cornflakes boxes was stacked almost to the ceiling. There was a similar pyramid of toilet rolls and another of teabags.
Instantly Pip formed a pretty clear idea about how they had appeared.
‘Do you do online shopping?’ she asked with a grin.
Evelyn looked peevish, but then her pinched expression widened into something softer.
‘I don’t know how to stop it,’ she admitted. ‘Nicholas said he’d help, but I said I was fine. Pride, I suppose. Now I think I could eat cornflakes every meal for the rest of my life and not get to the end of them.’
‘I do . . . did the same,’ confessed Pip. ‘The same things keep arriving week after week, and before you know it, you’re inundated. Once, I ordered what I thought was four bars of soap, but it turned out that each packet had six bars in it. The flat I shared with my boyfriend was quite small and there definitely wasn’t room for twenty-four bars of soap. He wasn’t best pleased.’
‘That’s funny,’ Evelyn said, and started to laugh, a light tinkling sound, almost a giggle. ‘I’m so glad it’s not just me. And what’s even funnier is I don’t even like cornflakes that much.’
She rolled her eyes at her own foolishness. When she smiled, she looked ten years younger, and Pip thought she could see something of the Evelyn she had come to know through the diary.
‘I can help you change your order if you like,’ she offered.
Evelyn dropped her gaze towards the tea lake. ‘That would be most helpful,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how things got into such a pickle. I used to keep on top of the house, but then I sort of lost interest in it, and the messier it got the harder it became to tidy up. Nicholas despairs of me. He’s always at me to let him help, but I can’t bear the thought of him rooting through my things, even if it is mainly rubbish. That’s how the diary ended up in the charity shop, by Nicholas trying to be useful, although I wish he’d told me what he was doing. I have no idea what else was in that box, what other treasures he might have seen fit to give away.’
‘It was just old paperbacks,’ replied Pip helpfully. ‘I don’t want to make assumptions, but I don’t think there was anything precious in there – except the diary, of course.’
There was a heartbeat’s pause. Evelyn opened her mouth to speak and Pip felt certain she was about to ask her if she had read the diary, but then she seemed to change her mind.
Instead she said, ‘I’d better get this lot cleaned up. Such a nuisance. So silly of me. And that was my favourite teapot as well.’
Pip dropped to her hands and knees and began to pick up the bits of pottery, nestling them in the largest piece whilst Evelyn tiptoed out of the tea and went to find a mop. When she returned, Pip got Evelyn to sit down whilst she set to clearing the mess, putting the kettle on to boil for a second time and locating another teapot in a cupboard, all under Evelyn’s direction.
Soon everything was sorted, and a fresh pot of tea sat brewing in a tiny space that Evelyn had cleared on the table.
‘You can get help with all this, you know,’ said Pip gently.
‘I know,’ said Evelyn. ‘But the mess isn’t really the problem. If I cleared it all away it would just come back. I need to sort out in here first . . .’ She tapped the side of her head with her hand. ‘Or there’ll be no point.’