‘I’m serious,’ he said, the joshing tone of the moment before now gone. ‘You’ve always been special, Pip. You mean the world to me. You always have done, ever since we were kids.’
His words went straight to her drunken heart. Who didn’t want to be told they were special? Suddenly she felt cherished in a way she hadn’t for a long time. And he was right. There had been a bond between them since the first time he had led her, nervous but excited about what was to come, up the rickety ladder in the old hay barn. Sex in a hay barn was such a cliché, but no less lovely for that. It hadn’t been his first time – of course it hadn’t; they were seventeen – but Pip had liked to think the memory of it occupied a precious place in his heart. It certainly did in hers.
She could do it, she thought. There was nothing to stop her. They could leave the pub and walk the short distance to his tiny cottage. It would be safe and easy, and she longed for someone to take care of her, to hold her tight and let her drift away from the last few months, if only for an hour or two.
But Jez was drunk and heartbroken. The last thing he needed was a confusing night with an old flame who was barely holding it together herself. And yet . . .
Pip pushed herself up from the table and looked straight into the familiar hazel eyes.
‘Come on,’ she said softly. ‘Let’s go.’
45
Evelyn had ventured out of the house.
She had dressed with care and walked to the hardware shop to buy sturdy black plastic bags. The man behind the counter had assured her they were the strongest he stocked, although he hadn’t enquired what she intended to do with them. Evelyn was tempted to hint that she had chopped up a body that she needed to dispose of. She’d had such fun with people sometimes, back when she used to have fun. They were so easy to wind up, and she was great at playing whichever part might suit her story. Perhaps she should get in touch with that Evelyn Mountcastle and invite her to come and stay.
Back at the house, she sat at the kitchen table with the bags in a heavy roll in front of her, and despaired. What had seemed like a wonderful idea first thing that morning – clearing the kitchen so she could actually function – now felt akin to climbing Everest in flippers.
She sighed, defeated before she had even begun. How had she let things get so bad? There had been a time after Joan died when she had been on top of it all. She had even thought about re-engaging the cleaner that Joan had sacked. She had always liked her, and she missed having someone around the place to talk to.
But the weeks had rolled into months and then years, and she hadn’t done anything about anything. And this was the result. Chaos.
She took a deep breath, tore the first bag from the huge roll, and began. To start with, she checked each item before dropping it into the gaping mouth of the sack, but within ten minutes she took to simply sweeping the contents of each surface into the black void. It didn’t take long before she was quite enjoying herself, hefting the weight of the full bin bags as if that could determine their value. Soon she had ten filled to the top, and the floor was covered in things that hadn’t quite gone in the right direction when she whooshed them from the surface and into the waiting sack.
And it felt good. It was as if by clearing the backlog of stuff that had accumulated, she was also clearing her mind, her spirit. She felt lighter, less weighed down by it all. Maybe when she had the place straight, she could undertake a little refurbishment. She didn’t think she could bear the upheaval of anything major, but a fresh lick of paint and maybe a new carpet or two might be nice.
This was all Pip’s doing. The young woman had wandered into her life and, without meaning to, had turned something on inside her that Evelyn thought had been painted over and could never move again. Evelyn wished she could return the favour. The poor girl was in limbo, not able to move forward with her life and too scared to go back. There wasn’t much she could do practically, but she could talk to her, encourage her to address the things that were haunting her. Bottling things up was no way to carry on. That way madness lay, she thought knowingly as she cast her eyes around the devastation that was her kitchen. And after all, wasn’t that precisely what Pip had done for her? Talking about Scarlet for the first time in so very long had released fresh memories of her in Evelyn’s mind. She had been frightened of extracting them before, worried they might have fragmented into something irretrievable, but the Scarlet who had danced into her mind had been as vivid as ever and not at all tainted by time.