Reluctantly Home(29)

When she did allow herself to think about the accident, gingerly, tentatively, like a tongue touching a mouth ulcer, it felt as if she would never get back to the way she had been before. She hadn’t had a full-blown panic attack for a month now, so that had to be a good sign, but flashbacks still haunted her. A blast on a car horn, the screech of tyres on tarmac, the wailing call of a siren could all trigger her fear. Other things made her heart race, too: a car pulling out from a side road, pedestrians standing too close to the pavement’s edge as they waited for a gap in the traffic to cross the road. Any one of these was enough to prompt a vivid rerun of the accident in her mind’s eye.

And then there were the children. Even though she no longer drove a car and was unlikely to do much harm with her bicycle, just seeing children near the road was enough to make the whole terrible incident as raw and real as it had been on day one. Women who carelessly pushed their buggies out in front of them as they tried to nip between the cars, boys with footballs or skateboards or anything that might put them in harm’s way. She wanted to scream at them, to warn them of the perils they faced in showing such wanton disregard for their own safety. Pip hated headphones and ice cream vans and gangs of teenagers and other bicycles – basically anything that might distract a child and cause them to run out into the road and under the wheels of a passing car, just as the boy had done to her. She felt that she needed to save their lives because she couldn’t save his. And whilst technically, morally and legally Pip might be blameless, of course she wasn’t really. She had killed a child. It had been her. No one else. And it was something she would carry with her every day. Forever.

The only solution she had found was to keep herself busy. And at the moment, being busy meant going to the shop.

When she arrived that morning, the front door was already wide open and business was, if not brisk, then at least under way. A woman with hair an unlikely shade of auburn was stalking through the rails of clothes like a wildcat, searching for anything new, and another couple of women were rummaging through everything with careless fingers, chatting to one another as they moved. Until she had begun working in a charity shop, Pip had had no inkling of how many people made a quick flick through the rails a regular part of their days. In fact, she didn’t even know where there were charity shops in her part of London. Working here was proving to be a very edifying and humbling experience.

Pip hung her coat up and went to tell Audrey that she had arrived. She found her at the till, chatting to a customer as she folded her purchases, popped them into reused plastic bags and then took the few coins that the shop charged. Not wanting to interrupt, Pip busied herself straightening the books. She knew better than to stand still doing nothing on Audrey’s watch.

Once Audrey was free, Pip sidled over to her.

‘Morning,’ she began. ‘How did the bring-and-buy sale go?’

Audrey gave a little toss of her head, a knowing smile flickering across her lips, and Pip knew at once that not only had the sale been a success, but that Audrey was sure all credit for this should go to her.

‘Very well indeed,’ she said proudly. ‘Another heathy chunk of money towards the church roof fund. And how about you? Did you have a nice weekend?’

Pip’s thoughts skipped to Dominic, to his face as he told her was leaving, but she closed the images down as soon as they popped up.

‘Pretty quiet,’ she said. Her mind raced as she tried to think how to get the information she wanted without arousing any awkward cross-questioning, but in the end she just said, ‘Audrey, do you happen to know someone called Evelyn Mountcastle?’

Audrey was rearranging a selection of notelets, moving the less popular designs to the front of the stand. ‘Evelyn Mountcastle, the actress?’ she asked, without looking up. ‘Not to speak to, although I’d recognise her if I saw her in the street. Not that you’re likely to see her in the street.’

There was so much tantalising information in this reply that for a moment Pip was thrown off course as she decided which part to chase first.

‘I didn’t know she was an actress,’ she began, although of course she did.

‘Oh, yes,’ replied Audrey, drawing out the syllables and thus revealing that there was a story to tell. ‘Quite well known in the seventies, I gather. But there was a scandal of some sort and she came back to Southwold and then . . . Well, it was so tragic.’ Audrey shook her head mournfully.

‘What happened?’ asked Pip, trying not to sound like a rubbernecker, but desperate to know all the same.

‘That house was full of misfortune,’ Audrey continued. ‘It’s no wonder she went a little doolally. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you? Send anyone a bit mad, something like that.’

Something like what? Pip was bursting to ask, but then a customer called over from the back of the shop needing some help with a zip and Audrey bustled off, leaving Pip with half a story.

As the day wore on, Pip tried to create opportunities to ask Audrey more about Evelyn Mountcastle, but without success. She was reluctant to just come straight out with her questions in case she somehow gave away that she had taken the diary, which she knew Audrey would take a very dim view of.

On the other hand, Pip thought as she sorted clothes into piles, Audrey seemed to know everything about everybody in the town. And if she didn’t know, she made it her business to find out. Pip might do better not to delve any deeper with the inquisitive Audrey, instead she should try to find the information she wanted from another, less curious, source.