Reluctantly Home(70)
Now she had confessed to a virtual stranger, and it was too late to go back and reclaim it.
‘What do you mean, Evelyn?’ Pip asked, interrupting her train of thought. ‘What do you mean that you killed her?’
Evelyn hung her head. ‘What I said. I was so angry. I screamed at her, she took a step backwards and she fell down the stairs.’
She could still picture the scene as clearly as if it had happened yesterday – Joan stepping back into space, her arms windmilling as she desperately tried to save herself, the sound as she tumbled down the long straight staircase and the thud when she finally landed at the bottom, her body lying, quite still, in an unnatural shape. And then the silence.
‘Did you push her?’ asked Pip gently.
Evelyn shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t touch her.’
‘Then it was an accident, surely?’ said Pip.
‘But if it hadn’t been for us arguing she would never have fallen,’ Evelyn insisted. ‘It was my fault. I screamed at her and she stepped backwards and missed her step.’
‘But that doesn’t mean you were responsible for her death,’ said Pip. ‘It was just a horrible and very tragic accident, but you can’t blame yourself. You mustn’t feel responsible.’
Pip reached out and put a hand on her forearm, resting it there. Evelyn could feel the pressure of it through her clothes, warm, comforting, secure.
‘It’s all right. I’ve never regretted what happened,’ she said, her voice and her eyes both low. ‘You might be shocked by that, but it’s the truth. She got what she deserved. It’s always felt like a kind of karma to me. My sister took the most precious thing in my life and then fate intervened and took the most precious thing in hers.’
Pip shrugged. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a terrible way to look at it,’ she said. ‘Things have a way of working out like that. I’d agree it was the universe stepping in if I believed in any of that kind of thing. I can’t say that Joan deserved to die for what she did, but I can’t say that I’m sorry.’
Evelyn gave her a grateful little smile. ‘She might have fallen and just walked away with cuts and bruises,’ she said.
‘Well, precisely,’ replied Pip. ‘It was an accident. Nobody’s fault, and least of all yours.’
Evelyn lifted her eyes to meet Pip’s. ‘You know, I could say much the same to you, Pip. It was just chance that that little boy ran out in front of your car. It could have been anyone that hit him, but it just happened to be you. I suppose the only difference between the pair of us is that you are tortured by a sense of guilt about what happened, and I am not. Two sides of the same coin.’
Pip frowned and looked as if she was about to object, but then she nodded. ‘I suppose so,’ she said.
They sat in silence for a moment, the bustle of the café carrying on around them.
‘What did you think?’ Evelyn asked after a moment. ‘When you read what I wrote in the diary?’
‘The part about you being glad that she was dead?’ Pip replied.
Evelyn nodded.
Pip blew her lips out. ‘I wasn’t sure what to think, really,’ she said. ‘I heard a rumour that one of you had murdered the other, and I suppose for a moment I did wonder. The diary was quite ambiguous, but it could have been interpreted as an indication that you had killed her. It felt unlikely, though, especially after everything else that I’d read about your life and what kind of a person you are. I couldn’t imagine you as a murderer!’
Evelyn gave half a smile. ‘Jolly glad to hear it,’ she said.
Pip put her fingers to her face and tapped a nail against her teeth as if deciding what to say next. ‘There was one thing that I didn’t understand, though. If I’m honest, it really confused me.’ She was twisting her bottom lip between her fingers and looking straight into Evelyn’s eyes, clearly uncomfortable with what she wanted to say but desperate to say it all the same.
‘Go on,’ said Evelyn cautiously.
‘Well, I didn’t realise that you had left Scarlet with Joan,’ Pip began slowly. ‘The diary doesn’t say that. So I couldn’t understand why you didn’t seem to feel any remorse for what had happened. There was me, haunted by my guilt for my part in the death of a child, and yet you seemed to have none.’
Now it was Evelyn’s turn to be confused. Something prickled at the back of her neck as she tried to grasp exactly what it was that Pip was saying.
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ she said slowly. ‘Did you think I was responsible for my own child’s death?’
Pip lowered her eyes to the table and nodded her head. ‘Not exactly, but your three-year-old child drowned. I couldn’t understand how you didn’t seem to be feeling responsible for that, at least in part. From everything I read, I just assumed that Scarlet was with you when she died. But then there was nothing that suggested any guilt. I just couldn’t follow it.’
Evelyn considered what Pip had said carefully. Was she saying that she thought Scarlet had died though a lack of care on her part? She felt herself bristle, but then again, she supposed that without having all the pieces of the jigsaw it wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion to reach. But if that were the case, then it gave rise to a question of her own.