‘No,’ she said to Pip. ‘Not any more. I used to, but then . . .’
‘And would you like to go out?’ Pip asked.
Evelyn paused. Would she? Did she feel that her life would be better if she ventured beyond her own front door again?
She was considering her answer when Pip added, ‘Because I could take you. I mean, we could go together. If you like.’
Again, Pip blushed, as if she thought she might have gone further than was appropriate. She was such a lovely girl, Evelyn thought. This afternoon had shown her that. She could tell she was caring and considerate simply by the way she had helped in the kitchen, quietly and with no fuss. Even knowing barely anything about her, Evelyn believed she had got Pip pegged.
‘Yes,’ she said shortly, her decisiveness surprising her. ‘I rather think I would. It’s not good for one, being cooped up all the time. Nicholas has offered, too,’ she added quickly. She didn’t want Pip to think she had been abandoned by the only bit of family she had left. ‘But he’s always in such a rush. And he doesn’t have that much conversation for an old woman like me.’
Pip smiled as if she understood completely. Yes, Evelyn thought to herself, this had the makings of quite an interesting relationship.
‘So, Pip,’ she said. ‘You haven’t told me why you’re back in Southwold.’
She smiled warmly as she spoke. She had had her turn, opened up and shared a little of her life, and now she could sit back and relax whilst someone else took the spotlight.
Pip turned her head and looked directly at Evelyn, dark eyes seeking out pale ones. She drew in a breath before she spoke and it caught a little in her throat.
‘I killed a child,’ she said simply.
38
Pip felt the atmosphere in the room darken. She could have kicked herself. Why had she said that? They had been having such a lovely time, the two of them, and now she had spoiled it all.
She hadn’t even intended to tell Evelyn, not yet at least, and certainly not by blurting it out so baldly. The truth of what she had done wasn’t something she had ever had to voice aloud before. Everyone in her world already knew, and they had been trying to help her by steering clear of the subject. But somehow, despite all her years of training at the bar, all those sentences spoken in court, constructed so very carefully in order to achieve the precise result she needed, when she was asked a direct question, she had replied in the most direct terms possible.
Part of her wanted to pull the words back now, to snatch them from the air between her and Evelyn and bury them deep where neither of them would ever hear them again. What she had done needed to be tempered with softer language, built up to, crept up upon like a sleeping dragon, and not faced head on with all its fiery breath and jagged teeth on display.
Yet the words had been spoken and now it was too late. There was nothing she could do to change that. She resisted the urge to look away and hide her face, and instead kept her eyes trained on Evelyn, waiting for a reaction. It was bound to be bad. Evelyn herself had lost her daughter. She knew exactly what that felt like, how unbearable the pain that accompanied the death of a child was. She had been living it for thirty-five years, making Pip’s last few horrible months a mere drop in the ocean of her tears.
Pip saw a variety of emotions register on Evelyn’s face in the aftermath of her confession. First shock, then anger, then repulsion followed by a dark curiosity, and now something that Pip hoped might be pity.
Neither woman spoke, each apparently considering what could possibly be said, and then Evelyn swallowed. She appeared to be measuring her response. She’ll throw me out now, thought Pip. This embryonic relationship we were delighting in just moments ago is going to evaporate into thin air. It was a fair reaction. How could Evelyn be expected to tolerate her, given what she’d done, particularly when you put it into the context of Evelyn’s own life?
Pip began to push herself to her feet. She would leave now, before Evelyn had a chance to ask her to go. That would be best for both of them. She had returned the diary, which was the most important thing. Now the two of them could go back to the way things had been before and forget they had ever spent a pleasant couple of hours in each other’s company.
‘Did you do it on purpose?’ Evelyn asked calmly.
Pip, who had been caught up in her own thought process, was thrown for a moment. When she didn’t reply, Evelyn repeated herself.
‘Did you do it on purpose, kill the child on purpose?’ she said, louder this time.
Pip was horrified. Her cheeks burned and she could feel her throat close up as tears filled her eyes. ‘No!’ she said, her voice small, childlike. ‘No! Of course not! It was an accident. A horrible, terrible accident. He ran under the wheels of my car. It wasn’t my fault. The police, the coroner, they all said that I wasn’t to blame . . . But I killed him. If it hadn’t been for me, he would still be alive.’