Reluctantly Home(64)

Pip smiled as if she understood completely. Yes, Evelyn thought to herself, this had the makings of quite an interesting relationship.

‘So, Pip,’ she said. ‘You haven’t told me why you’re back in Southwold.’

She smiled warmly as she spoke. She had had her turn, opened up and shared a little of her life, and now she could sit back and relax whilst someone else took the spotlight.

Pip turned her head and looked directly at Evelyn, dark eyes seeking out pale ones. She drew in a breath before she spoke and it caught a little in her throat.

‘I killed a child,’ she said simply.





38


Pip felt the atmosphere in the room darken. She could have kicked herself. Why had she said that? They had been having such a lovely time, the two of them, and now she had spoiled it all.

She hadn’t even intended to tell Evelyn, not yet at least, and certainly not by blurting it out so baldly. The truth of what she had done wasn’t something she had ever had to voice aloud before. Everyone in her world already knew, and they had been trying to help her by steering clear of the subject. But somehow, despite all her years of training at the bar, all those sentences spoken in court, constructed so very carefully in order to achieve the precise result she needed, when she was asked a direct question, she had replied in the most direct terms possible.

Part of her wanted to pull the words back now, to snatch them from the air between her and Evelyn and bury them deep where neither of them would ever hear them again. What she had done needed to be tempered with softer language, built up to, crept up upon like a sleeping dragon, and not faced head on with all its fiery breath and jagged teeth on display.

Yet the words had been spoken and now it was too late. There was nothing she could do to change that. She resisted the urge to look away and hide her face, and instead kept her eyes trained on Evelyn, waiting for a reaction. It was bound to be bad. Evelyn herself had lost her daughter. She knew exactly what that felt like, how unbearable the pain that accompanied the death of a child was. She had been living it for thirty-five years, making Pip’s last few horrible months a mere drop in the ocean of her tears.

Pip saw a variety of emotions register on Evelyn’s face in the aftermath of her confession. First shock, then anger, then repulsion followed by a dark curiosity, and now something that Pip hoped might be pity.

Neither woman spoke, each apparently considering what could possibly be said, and then Evelyn swallowed. She appeared to be measuring her response. She’ll throw me out now, thought Pip. This embryonic relationship we were delighting in just moments ago is going to evaporate into thin air. It was a fair reaction. How could Evelyn be expected to tolerate her, given what she’d done, particularly when you put it into the context of Evelyn’s own life?

Pip began to push herself to her feet. She would leave now, before Evelyn had a chance to ask her to go. That would be best for both of them. She had returned the diary, which was the most important thing. Now the two of them could go back to the way things had been before and forget they had ever spent a pleasant couple of hours in each other’s company.

‘Did you do it on purpose?’ Evelyn asked calmly.

Pip, who had been caught up in her own thought process, was thrown for a moment. When she didn’t reply, Evelyn repeated herself.

‘Did you do it on purpose, kill the child on purpose?’ she said, louder this time.

Pip was horrified. Her cheeks burned and she could feel her throat close up as tears filled her eyes. ‘No!’ she said, her voice small, childlike. ‘No! Of course not! It was an accident. A horrible, terrible accident. He ran under the wheels of my car. It wasn’t my fault. The police, the coroner, they all said that I wasn’t to blame . . . But I killed him. If it hadn’t been for me, he would still be alive.’

Pip waited for the wave to engulf her, but nothing happened. Neither of them moved. Pip knew she was hollow inside – the last few months had shown her that – but so, it appeared, was Evelyn. She sat still, staring first at Pip and then, when that appeared to become too uncomfortable, at the mountain of cornflake boxes. The tap dripped steadily, the droplets of water thrumming on the stainless steel like the ticking of a clock as the moments passed. It was such an insistent noise that Pip couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard it before, even though it must have been there, punctuating their conversation.

Then Evelyn stood up. This is it, thought Pip. She’s going to ask me to leave now. She braced herself ready to receive the dismissal, but instead Evelyn said, ‘Come with me. I want to show you something.’

She walked stiffly but with purpose across the kitchen to the door. When Pip failed to follow, she stopped and beckoned her to go with her.

She led them into the corridor and towards the stairs, Pip following cautiously in her wake. Where were they going? For the briefest of moments, Pip worried for her own safety, but what could Evelyn do to her? She was so frail, and Pip was young and fit, and anyway, why would she want to hurt her? What Pip had done was awful, but it didn’t impact on Evelyn.

Evelyn started up the stairs. She had to pick her way through the debris that was waiting on either side of the treads, things that must have been left there to be carried upstairs and then ignored and added to until the path through became narrow and treacherous.

Upstairs Pip saw the door to the room that Evelyn must have been in when she had seen her at the window, but Evelyn didn’t take them in there, choosing instead the door to a room at the back of the house.