Reluctantly Home(27)
Satisfied, after a fashion, with her ragged logic, Pip lifted the cover. And there was the answer to her question on the very first page. Alongside the printed words, ‘This diary belongs to . . .’ was written in neat block capitals EVELYN MOUNTCASTLE.
Pip’s heart sank. That was it then. Mission accomplished. It belonged to one Evelyn Mountcastle and she had discovered this without having to read a single private word. Now all she had to do was discover the whereabouts of the owner and return it. Job done.
But that was no good. Pip was ready for an exploration of someone else’s world just for a little while, for a heathy dollop of escapism. Didn’t she deserve that, at least? Her own life was broken, possibly beyond repair. Surely someone up there should be cutting her some slack.
She shelved her carefully nurtured integrity and turned the page.
The writer’s expansive, cursive handwriting flowed over the creamy paper, gushing forth like water from a spring, all bubbles and effervescence. Even without reading the words, Pip could see the enthusiasm with which they had been written by the short, punchy sentences, the frequency of exclamation marks. There weren’t bubbles over the ‘i’s but there might as well have been.
You could tell a lot from someone’s handwriting, Pip knew, and this suggested a person with a zest for life, a natural exuberance. Pip’s own writing was neat and easy to read, but also rather boring. As a girl she had longed for a more distinctive style, even trying out various options with a view to switching to something with a little more personality, only for her writing to slip back to type whenever she stopped thinking about enhancing it.
But this was totally different, and from her handwriting alone, Evelyn Mountcastle looked like someone that Pip might like. She tried to calculate how old Evelyn might be now, but without any details of her life it was hard to work it out. Pip’s analytical mind began whirring. In the entries she had already read, Evelyn had a daughter, Scarlet, who seemed to be very young. So, say Evelyn had been thirty in 1983, she would be somewhere in her sixties now. That meant that there was a good chance she was still alive. The books and diary could have surfaced through a house clearance after her death, but it seemed unlikely.
Pip took a deep breath and then made a conscious decision to begin reading.
January 1st 1983
Happy birthday me!
In my life before Scarlet (B.S. if you will), I would probably have been at some sensational party as the clock struck midnight and time slipped me into my birthday. I’d most probably have been leaping about, making sure everyone knew that it was now me and not the turn of the year that required their attention. Honestly, I can barely remember those carefree days now. They feel like they happened to someone else, and in a different lifetime.
As 1983 began, I was tucked up in bed rather than celebrating at a party (although I wasn’t asleep – I do still have some vestiges of fun left in me and the turning of the year is something that should be marked, no matter how quietly). There was a party going on down the street somewhere and I could hear the revellers as they barrelled past the house on their way home. I also heard Joan open her window and bellow at them to be quiet because decent people were trying to sleep. Ironically, Joan probably woke more people with her caterwauling than the revellers had done. Now there’s a woman who doesn’t understand the concept of fun!
And then, a few short, sweet hours later I was woken by Scarlet who snuck into my room and my bed, pushing her cold little feet against my warm ones. She’d even remembered that it was my birthday, which is very impressive for a three-year-old. But then she is a very impressive child.
So, there is no better time than the start of the year to take stock of where you are and where you want to be. I am here and I don’t want to be! Well, that was easy. Not so easy is the task of changing things, but I’m going to make it my mission for 1983 to get back on track. Scarlet will start at school next year, but there will be playgroup before that so I should start to get a few precious hours to myself. I might even be able to get some kind of job, so I wouldn’t have to be beholden to Joan for absolutely everything. She makes it so obvious that she begrudges every penny she has to spend on me and Scarlet. But if I can work when Scarlet starts playgroup, then at least I could contribute a little, or even get some savings behind me ready for my escape!
When we move back to London, Ted says it will be easy to find someone to have Scarlet after school. So I’ll be able to go back to work properly. I am literally counting down the days . . .
By the time she heard her father’s Land Rover driving into the yard, Pip had reached the end of February 1983. From what she could gather, Evelyn Mountcastle lived a very small life with her daughter Scarlet and her sister, Joan. She seemed to have been in Southwold, which made sense given that the diaries had shown up at the shop. There were a couple of references to places that Pip could remember from her own childhood, although she hadn’t found anything specific enough to pinpoint where their house was.
She reached for her phone and googled ‘Evelyn Mountcastle actress’, but there was very little there, just a listing for a part in some seventies drama called Upstairs Downstairs , but all it gave was her name and date of birth, and confirmed that she had been born in Southwold, Suffolk. There was no photograph.
If Evelyn was from Southwold, though, then surely someone would know something about her, perhaps even her own mother. Southwold wasn’t a very big place and her parents had lived there all their lives. Quickly, she pulled on some jeans and a sweatshirt and went downstairs to join the others for breakfast.