Pip held her tongue, but she was telling herself the same thing.
Later, when she was back at the farm, Pip continued to think about Evelyn and Ted. It was obvious they’d been really close; he was perhaps the closest friend Evelyn had had. How difficult might it be to track him down? Quite hard, she concluded. She had very little to go on unless she asked Evelyn for some more details, which would give the game away. She didn’t even have a surname, so the usual social media trawling wasn’t an option, although she very much doubted Ted would bother with that kind of thing.
It should definitely be a surprise, she decided. If she had to bet, she would lay money on the old Evelyn, the Evelyn of the diary before Scarlet’s death, being up for a good surprise. Pip felt pretty sure she would be delighted, although she supposed there was a chance she’d pegged that wrong. Still, even if it didn’t work out entirely as she hoped, surely Evelyn would understand she had been trying to do something kind for her and not be too cross.
The prospect of pleasing Evelyn gave Pip a warm glow. Had it really been that long since she had done something for someone else with purely altruistic motives? It had, and she realised with more than a little shame, it went back a lot longer than just the accident. Rose Appleby wasn’t big on doing kind things for other people. She had been too absorbed in making everything perfect for herself.
Well, that was going to change, Pip thought. When she finally got back to London it would be a very different Rose Appleby sitting behind her grand mahogany desk.
43
A couple of days later, Pip was changing the window display at the shop when she saw the rangy figure of Nicholas Mountcastle striding down the pavement. She hadn’t seen Evelyn since their trip to the pier the previous weekend, but something about his purposeful gait made her sure that he was on his way to find her and that this visit had something to do with his aunt.
Arriving at the shop and seeing her standing in the window, trying to wrestle a naked mannequin into a bright yellow sundress, seemed to throw him off his task. He paused, staring up at her and seemingly unable to decide what to do next. Pip smiled and mouthed ‘hello’ through the glass. He didn’t smile back at her, which didn’t bode well. Pip wondered what he thought she’d done.
He stepped into the shop and loitered by the door, arms folded severely across his chest, and waited for her to emerge. It was clear he wanted a word and wasn’t going to leave until she obliged him, and so she put the half-dressed woman down and extracted herself from the window display area.
‘I assume you’re looking for me?’ she asked him, although that much was obvious.
‘Indeed,’ he said. Still no smile. ‘I was wondering if we might have a word. In private,’ he added as he caught sight of Audrey stalking across the shop towards them.
‘Of course,’ Pip replied as pleasantly as she could. ‘Is it all right if I just nip out for a moment, Audrey? I won’t be long.’
Audrey looked as though she wanted to say that that would be highly inconvenient but, as there were only the two of them in the shop, was forced to nod her agreement instead.
Pip followed Nicholas out on to the street.
‘How can I help?’ she asked him.
‘Well, the thing is . . .’ he said, his lips pursed so tightly that it must have been hard to speak. ‘Please leave my aunt alone. She is a vulnerable old woman . . .’
Pip’s eyebrows shot up. She could think of plenty of words to describe Evelyn, but vulnerable wasn’t one of them.
‘。 . . and she doesn’t need the likes of you preying on her, so I’d take it very kindly if you would stop calling on her.’
He spoke as if he had fallen out of the pages of a Jane Austen novel, and Pip wondered whether this was a preprepared speech rather than his natural choice of words.
‘Has Evelyn asked you to come?’ Pip asked. She thought it highly unlikely, particularly in light of their recent conversation, but she thought she had better check.
‘No,’ admitted Nicholas, ‘but as her next of kin I have to have her best interests in mind.’
Pip was curious. ‘And why, exactly, do you consider me to be not in her best interests?’ she asked, the corner of her mouth curling up into a smirk. ‘What is it that you believe I’ve done?’
Nicholas frowned and looked irritated at her apparent failure to take him seriously. ‘I just think it would be better if you stayed away from her,’ he replied tetchily.
It was obvious that he was very far from his comfort zone, that giving ultimatums to strangers wasn’t something he did every day, and that it might have been funny had Pip not been genuinely concerned about what he was saying.