Reluctantly Home(28)

Her father and Jez, having already done a couple of hours on the farm, were seated at the table, and her mother, polka-dot apron tied tightly round her waist, was serving sizzling strips of bacon on to buttered muffins. Jez looked up when Pip walked in and gave her a tentative smile. Her father eyed her quizzically, which Pip found disconcerting until she remembered that he would know about the drama with Dominic and would be worried about her state of mind.

‘Morning Pip, love,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

She could hear the concern in his voice but knew he would never ask her outright about the state of her love life. That kind of talk was definitely reserved for the women of the household.

She gave him her best smile. ‘I’m fine, thanks, Dad.’

He held her gaze for a second or two longer, as if trying to satisfy himself that she was telling the truth, and then returned his attention to his breakfast.

Pip lifted the teapot and pressed the flat of her hand to the china to test the temperature.

‘Would you like some bacon?’ her mother asked, but Pip shook her head. She had lost her appetite for huge farmhouse breakfasts. In London, fruit, yoghurt and granola, or smashed avocado, were more the order of the day. Or just coffee. God, she missed coffee.

She wanted to ask her mother about Evelyn as casually as she could and without referring to the purloined diary. It felt like her secret and she didn’t want to share it if she didn’t have to.

‘Oh Mum, I meant to ask,’ she began as lightly as she could, ‘do you know someone called Evelyn Mountcastle?’

Her mother pursed her lips and furrowed her brow as she searched her mind for the name. ‘Evelyn Mountcastle,’ she repeated, but then she shook her head. ‘Can’t say I do? Why? Who is she?’

‘Oh, no one,’ replied Pip a little too quickly. ‘I just overheard something in the shop, that was all, and I wondered if you knew her.’

‘Sorry, love. Do you know an Evelyn Mountcastle, Roy?’ her mother asked her father, but he too shook his head.

‘Never mind,’ said Pip. ‘It’s nothing important. I was just curious.’

Disappointment seeped into Pip’s fragile good mood. It had been a long shot that her parents might know something about Evelyn, but not out of the way impossible. It seemed, though, that in this as in so many other things recently, she was to be unlucky. Maybe Audrey would know her. Pip might even recognise her herself, if she was a regular in the shop. She would do some careful sniffing around at work and see what she could unearth.

Jez swallowed his mouthful of bacon, took a slurp of tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I know Miss Mountcastle,’ he said, without looking up from his plate. ‘Mum used to clean for her. Well, not her but the other Miss Mountcastle. Her sister. She lives on the seafront in one of those big houses that looks out on the prom. Or at least she used to. Mum’s not worked there for donkey’s years. But I remember her because she was a right cow. Not Evelyn. The other one.’ Then he took another bite of his muffin, rendering further conversation inadvisable.

The other Miss Mountcastle must have been the Joan from the diary, Pip thought, excited that she was starting to piece things together.

‘But you don’t know if she’s still living there?’ she asked, ignoring her mother’s curious expression, but Jez just shrugged and shook his head.

‘And how did you say you knew her, Pip?’ her mother asked.

Pip needed to backtrack fast. The last thing she needed was her mother getting involved. This was her adventure.

‘Oh, I don’t,’ she replied breezily. ‘I just heard her name, that was all.’

She tried to feign insouciance. She could tell from the way her mother had stopped washing the dishes at the sink that she wasn’t convinced by her explanation, but it would have to do.

Taking a piece of toast from the toast rack, Pip began buttering it with measured concentration. Then her father started talking about the wheat crop, and the conversation moved away from Evelyn Mountcastle.





16


Monday rolled round again. Pip had spent most of her weekend engrossed in Evelyn’s world and was slightly resentful that she had to break off to go to work. When her mother had first made the arrangement for her to help Audrey out, it hadn’t been anyone’s intention that it would be a full-time position, just a little something to get her away from the farm, to help with her rehabilitation, but over the weeks Pip had just started to turn up at the shop every day and no one seemed to object. If she didn’t make her way there each morning then she would be stuck with nothing but the contents of her own mind for company, and that wasn’t a healthy place for her to be.

Of course, she was fully aware that by failing to face the darkness in her head she was simply prolonging the time that it would take for her to recover, but that was the best she could manage at the moment. The thing with Dominic was a classic example. He had been her partner for well over two years before the accident. She had moved into his swanky flat, learned to like his friends and share his extravagant taste in cashmere jumpers and silk handkerchiefs. His life had become her life, and she had even dared to think that they might have a long future together.

And now he was gone, evaporated from her world like the steam from his Gaggia coffee machine, and she had barely wept a single tear. She was astute enough to understand that her lack of reaction was not a reflection of how upset she was about the break-up, but more to do with her overall state of mind. She had become an emotional wasteland. Nothing seemed to touch her any more, nothing could pierce the carapace that she had enclosed herself in because no emotional hurt could be as terrible or as devastating as the one she was already dealing with. Or not dealing with.