Evelyn’s words confused Pip. Was she saying that she had felt some guilt for her part in Scarlet’s death, despite how it had come across in the diary? If so, then maybe the two of them had more in common than she’d thought. Their bond was not merely because neither of them had fitted into the place they had been allocated in life. There was this other, much bigger and more painful connection binding them.
But then again, Evelyn’s child had drowned under her care. Pip had knocked the boy down, but she had no responsibility for his being there in the middle of the road. Did that somehow make her guilt different to Evelyn’s? Was there a way to rank levels of guilt? Pip didn’t know what to think, but something about Evelyn’s calm yet intense grief superseded all that. It was this powerful sense of loss the two of them shared. Loss and pain. And at this moment, it made the connection Pip felt towards Evelyn stronger than anything she had felt with any other person since the accident. Even though she was as good as a stranger, Pip wanted to reach out and hold her, comfort her, and in doing so, be comforted herself. But she held herself back.
Instead, the two women stood shoulder to shoulder at the window and watched as a tortoiseshell cat prowled across the rose bed in search of easy prey.
39
‘So, tell me again who this woman is,’ said Nicholas as Evelyn stood in her hallway dusting down her coat.
Evelyn didn’t like his tone. It was laced with suspicions that she knew were entirely misplaced and that she should dispel for Pip’s sake, but at the same time she resented having to explain herself to her nephew. She was perfectly capable of forming her own judgements about people, and she definitely didn’t need them tainted by his dark imaginings.
‘Her name is Pip and she works in the charity shop. The one, might I add, where you abandoned my precious possessions without having first asked my permission to remove them from my house,’ she replied pointedly.
Evelyn was glad to see him squirm a little at this. He should squirm as well, causing all that heartache over the diary, but at least something good had come out of his interference. If he hadn’t taken the box to the charity shop then she wouldn’t have met Pip, and for that at least she owed him something. Not that she was about to tell him so.
She was grateful, though, that in his cack-handed way he had brought Pip into her life. In their two brief meetings, Evelyn had grown fond of her. She recognised something of herself in Pip’s self-contained confidence, which was, although a little battered and bruised, still there, shining from her like a flare. Her quiet determination to follow her own path despite all the obstacles placed in her way spoke to Evelyn, the old Evelyn at any rate, the one who had taken the train to London with only a tatty suitcase and a handful of banknotes hidden inside a sock. And Nicholas was not going to spoil this for her. She would defend this outing come what may.
‘Pip has kindly returned the diary to me,’ Evelyn continued, ‘and today she is going to take me out for a walk, which I am very much looking forward to.’
Nicholas was shaking his head. ‘But every time I ask if you’d like to go out, you knock me back,’ he said sulkily.
This was true.
‘Let me take you instead, Aunt Evelyn,’ he said, although without much enthusiasm. ‘We can leave a note on the door for this charity woman. Tell her that you’ve changed your mind.’
‘But I haven’t changed my mind,’ objected Evelyn. ‘I want to go out with Pip. And she’ll be here in a moment, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to get ready.’
Nicholas still looked unconvinced. ‘Well, I shall stay with you until she arrives,’ he said, clearly disgruntled that his half-hearted offer had been spurned. ‘So I can make sure she’s kosher.’
Evelyn tutted loudly. ‘Of course she’s “kosher”， as you so indelicately put it. What do you think she’s going to do? Push me off the pier?’
An expression settled on Nicholas’s face that suggested this was exactly what he was thinking, but he had the good sense to keep his opinions to himself.
Evelyn pulled on her coat. It was a trench coat, the kind that had been quite fashionable some years back, but it now looked a little grubby. In the pocket her fingers found a balled-up silk scarf, which she unravelled with a flick of her wrist. She expected moths to come flying out, but there were none. Lifting the silk to her nose, she breathed in cautiously. The scarf smelled a little musty and faintly of a perfume she used to wear before such things became unimportant to her, but it wasn’t bad. Standing in front of the hallway mirror, she tied it around her head and immediately felt more glamorous. She wasn’t quite Audrey Hepburn, but she didn’t look too unpresentable.