Reluctantly Home(6)

Sometimes I really hate Joan. I know we’re stuck here together with nowhere else to go and we have to make the best of a bad situation, but I swear she makes everything ten thousand times harder than it needs to be. And she’s such a cow to me. She does it on purpose, I’m sure she does – I can picture her sitting in her bedroom just thinking up new ways to torture me and poor little Scarlet, as if any of this mess is her fault.

But today her vileness reached new depths. Scarlet’s blanky disappeared. I know it’s only an old cot blanket and almost worn to rags, but Scarlet adores it. She carries it round with her all the time and she won’t go to sleep unless she’s holding it and rubbing its satin edge up against her darling little cheek.

Anyway, it was her nap time but there was no sign of blanky anywhere. She cried as if her tiny little heart would break. I tried comforting her but she was having none of it. I gave her no end of other things to hug but nothing else would do. And the more tired she got the worse state she got herself into. So I asked Joan if she could help me find it, but she refused and kept going on about how it was irresponsible of me to let Scarlet get so attached to one thing. She couldn’t have been more cruel about it. And all this time poor darling Scarlet was screaming and screaming as if someone was trying to murder her. In the end, she got beyond herself and just cried herself to sleep in my arms. She was completely exhausted by the whole ordeal.

Then later, I found blanky in the kitchen bin. When I fished it out it was filthy, with teabags and potato peelings stuck to it. I asked Joan about it. I mean, there are only the three of us here, and me and Scarlet didn’t put it there. Joan just said that Scarlet was too old to have something like that and it was about time she threw it away. So the entire time that I’d been searching, with Scarlet breaking her little heart, Joan had known exactly where it was – the heartless bitch.

I can’t believe how horrible she is to us. Sometimes I lie awake at night just wondering how I could get my own back, or even get rid of her somehow. Of course, I’d have to make sure I wasn’t caught, because if I had to go to prison then poor S would have no one.

Even though I’m Joan’s sister and Scarlet is her niece, I don’t think she loves us at all. If I could live anywhere else in the world I would go. I swear, you wouldn’t see us for dust. But I know I can’t. We’re stuck here, in this godforsaken house in this tiny town, whilst my old life just disappears down the Swanee.

The last sentence chimed so loudly with Pip’s own position that it brought her up short. It was uncanny. She could have written the entry herself. Looking up from the diary for a moment, she checked that Audrey was still occupied elsewhere and then read on.

Saturday 26th February

I’ve been quite low today. It’s probably because Joan was so horrible yesterday. I kept thinking about how things might have been. It’s the injustice of it all that really irks me. The pregnancy, losing the best job I’ve ever had, being forced to move back here. It’s all so unfair. Plus, the second series of Into the Blue is coming out soon, which is just the icing on the stinking cake! I saw a trailer for it today and, annoyingly, it looks fantastic. It breaks my heart that the role should have been my big break and yet here I am, no longer an actress – no longer anything at all except a single mother. I know that’s a really important job and I wouldn’t be without my darling S, but I don’t see why I couldn’t have had the job and the baby. I’d have made it work if I’d only been given the chance. But no. I had to up sticks, leave it all behind and just accept that’s the way things work.

And what makes it worse is that Joan is so obnoxious. She never misses an opportunity to say something nasty. She obviously thinks I should be ashamed of Scarlet – she even called me a trollop this morning. And she said it in front of S! Of course, S had no idea what it meant, but she asked me afterwards and I had to make something up. I was biting back the tears. I’m sure poor little S noticed that I was upset. It can’t be good for her growing up in this toxic atmosphere, but what choice do I have? That’s how J gets away with it. She knows that I’ve got nowhere else to go.

I almost asked Ted if we could live with him last week but I know that wouldn’t work. I’ve got no money and I can’t ask him to support us. People will think that S is his child and that would just make his life difficult as well as mine, plus it would break his mother’s heart and I couldn’t do that to him. I know he wants to help, but there’s not much he can do from down there. At least when I ring him if Joan goes out, he’s happy to listen to me rant. Bless him. He’s been so good to me. I really miss him.

And (now I really am ranting) on top of all that, I’m a much better actress than the one they replaced me with. I know that sounds a bit arrogant but it’s true! Rory MacMillan will never know what he’s missed.

Pip’s mind was all questions. Who was the diary writer, and her horrible sister? What had happened between the two of them to so damage their relationship? There was clearly a child involved, Scarlet, but where was the father? Ted was mentioned, but it wasn’t him. And who was Rory MacMillan? The whole thing read like a soap opera.

Pip had never heard of a programme called Into the Blue , although if it was on the television in 1983, seven years before she was even born, it was unlikely she would have done. She itched to do a quick Google search, but if Audrey caught her on her phone in shop time she’d be in trouble. Rose wouldn’t care, but Pip knew that shop life ran much more smoothly if she didn’t break any of Audrey’s rules. She would look it up later.