Reluctantly Home(42)

Being happy with your lot, Pip thought, now there was a concept she had struggled with over the years, but she was starting to see that perhaps there was more to it than she had given her parents credit for. Before the accident she had been dismissive of what she had seen as their narrow vision of the world. Their apparent lack of ambition had always frustrated her, but now she wondered whether what she had always seen as a weakness could actually be more of a strength.

‘Did you have a nice drink with Jez?’ her mother asked as she scrubbed mud from the carrots, passing them to Pip to peel and chop for the pot. ‘That’s twice you’ve been out now, isn’t it?’

The question was innocently asked, Pip knew, but she baulked at it. Her default setting as a teenager had always been to guard any information about her life preciously, but what harm could it possibly do to share her thoughts with her mother now – or even then, for that matter?

‘Yes, although tonight’s was a bit spur of the moment,’ she said. ‘It was lovely to chat, though. He hasn’t changed a bit. I’m not sure why I left it so long to talk to him, to be honest.’

‘You’ve had a lot to deal with,’ her mother said simply.

‘And he’s getting married?’ Pip continued, anxious to make light of the news before her mother mentioned it. ‘You never said.’

‘Didn’t I?’ replied her mother casually. ‘I must have forgotten.’

Pip could see straight through her mother’s attempts at insouciance.

‘I was never going to marry Jez, Mum,’ she laughed, although a tiny part of her was still smarting at his announcement.

‘You could have done a lot worse,’ her mother replied. ‘He’s a good man.’

Pip thought of the trouble she and Jez sought out when they were young, something her mother had either forgotten or had never known of in the first place. Or perhaps she was just choosing to overlook that, now Pip was very firmly on the shelf and Jez was about to tie the knot.

‘Jez and I would never have worked,’ she said. ‘In fact, we’d have been disastrous together.’ She had been aiming for confident, but her voice sounded closer to wistful. ‘What’s she like, anyway, the fiancée? Have you met her?’

‘Teresa? Oh yes. She’s very . . .’ Her mother paused, and Pip knew that she was searching for a way to express her doubts without being critical. ‘Very . . . confident.’

Pip smiled to herself. Pushy, then.

‘I think there’s money there,’ her mother added, in that way that she talked about people she considered socially superior to her and that Pip had always hated. ‘Jez has never said, but there’s something about the way she holds herself. You can tell. And her clothes. I think she’s quite posh.’

Pip could read her mother’s code as clearly as if it were written in the Queen’s English. Too posh for Jez. But not as posh as me, Pip wanted to say. Not as posh as Rose Appleby, at least. Her mother wouldn’t understand, though, and anyway, what was the point? What did it matter how you behaved or spoke or dressed? There were so many more important things to life, not least being alive.

‘I gather she’s got a good job,’ Pip continued.

‘Yes. She’s the manager of that big hotel on the front. I forget the name.’

She hadn’t forgotten the name, Pip thought. Her mother really didn’t like Jez’s fiancée.

There was a pause in which Pip knew her mother was girding her loins to ask a difficult question. She braced herself.

‘And did you manage to talk to Jez?’

She pressed the word ‘talk’ so that her meaning would be crystal clear without her having to spell it out. She had Pip’s best interests at heart and just wanted her to recover, Pip knew, so she curbed her irritation.

‘A bit,’ she replied, and could almost feel her mother’s relief pass between them like a current.

‘That’s good,’ said her mother, and Pip was relieved that she seemed content to leave it at that.



After dinner, Pip excused herself as usual and retreated to her room and the diary for her nightly foray into Evelyn’s life. She settled herself on her bed and opened up where she had left off the night before.

Tuesday 16th August

Such a perfect day today. I took Scarlet crabbing off the end of the pier. We dug Peter’s old line out of the garage and I stole a couple of rashers of bacon from the fridge as bait. High tide was madly early – no problem for us, of course – so it wasn’t too busy, and we got a great spot. S wasn’t very patient about the waiting part, and I kept telling her it might take a while, but then, lo and behold, we struck gold within ten minutes! He was a whopper, too, and we managed to get him all the way up and into our bucket without dropping him. Scarlet was so excited (and a little bit scared), but I showed her how to hold him so he didn’t pinch her, and she gave him a bit of a stroke on his shell. Then we put him back and went to get hot chocolate and a bun in the café. S didn’t finish hers – I think she might be coming down with something – but I polished it off for her. Then we built her favourite sandcastle – the one with a moat and bridge – and wandered back home for her nap just as the beach was filling up. It was perfect.

Pip had only vague memories of going crabbing herself. Her parents had always been too busy to take time away from the farm for activities like that, and by the time she was old enough to go alone she was too caught up with her studies to be interested. It did sound like the perfect day for Evelyn and Scarlet, though. She could picture them, Evelyn dressed like someone from Dexys Midnight Runners, her hair held out of her eyes with a polka-dot scarf and Scarlet in a little sundress, walking hand in hand along the beach with their bucket and line. It was such a happy, carefree image that it made Pip smile.