Reluctantly Home(87)

‘Actually, Ted,’ she said. ‘I think it was the other way around.’

Ted looked from one of them to the other. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose it matters who did what. The main thing is that you’re both here now.’

And Evelyn had to agree with him.





51


Friday 21st June 2019


Midsummer’s Day. Not quite the first of January, but halfway through the year seems like an appropriate place to start, with half the months finished and half still to come.

I found this diary on the bargain shelf in the stationer’s. I hadn’t really been looking for one – it hadn’t crossed my mind to start writing a diary again – but it spoke to me. It’s not quite the same as all the others, a little taller and thinner, but I decided that didn’t matter. In many ways it’s a good thing. The shape of the diary reflects a change in me and my life and when I look at them, all lined up on the shelf in my now not-that-messy study, I will know at a glance where the old life ended and the new one began.

So, yesterday Pip and I took the train to London. It’s a big leap from a wander on the pier to a train ride to London but I took it in my stride, and I was proud of myself. I have to confess to being more than a little nervous, not so much about the trip itself but about meeting Ted again after all these years. When Pip first told me that she’d tracked him down, I wasn’t sure meeting up was a good idea. My old agent Julian used to say, never look back unless you’re planning to go that way. Well, I’m definitely not. This is a fresh start for me. I know I’m an old lady, but age is just a number – you’re as young as you feel and all other appropriate clichés.

Anyway, in the end I decided that no harm could possibly come from a brief stroll down Memory Lane with dear old Ted.

And I am delighted to report that he was just the same as ever. Older, of course – aren’t we all? – but it wasn’t hard to find the man I once knew so well in the lines and creases of his face. Our café is no more, but that was all right. Things change and move on all the time. That’s just how it should be. We said we’d keep in touch, Ted and me. I think we will. I told him about wanting to get a part in a show in Southwold, and he said he’d move heaven and earth to get up to see me. Pip says she’ll come, too, although I’m sure she’ll be very busy when she gets back into the swing of things in London.

I’ve bought myself an iPad. Evelyn Mountcastle enters the twenty-first century. Nicholas said he couldn’t see the point and that the old computer he gave me works perfectly well. But I told him that if I wanted to FaceTime Pip then I needed the right equipment. I think he worries for what’s left of his inheritance!

After we’d left Ted, we went to see Pip’s new house. She has an apartment on the second floor of a huge Victorian townhouse in Hackney. It’s not that far from where I lived with Brenda on Kentish Town Road, although the place has changed so much I didn’t realise where I was until the taxi had already flown past the front door.

As we were exploring, there was a knock on the door. Pip opened it and there was a woman on the doorstep holding a lemon drizzle cake and a pot plant. Her name is Saffron, she’s a midwife and she lives in the flat downstairs. Pip was delighted to have neighbours who bothered to find out who she was. I think she’s going to be just fine there.

We came home together but Pip will be moving in next weekend. I shall miss her more than she knows, but I’ll be up in town much more regularly from now on so it will be easy enough to get together.

And why might that be? I hear you cry. I thought you’d never ask. I have got myself an agent – not Julian, of course. I didn’t even bother looking him up, although I’m sure he’ll be retired by now – or dead. This one is a very keen young woman called Kate. She seems highly confident that she will be able to keep me busy. Age brings character roles, apparently, and in this brave new ‘no-woman-is-invisible, age-is-no-barrier, grey-hair-don’t-care’ world the older actress is in great demand. If you don’t believe me then just look at Dames Judy and Helen. And what about Imelda and Maggie, Diana and Celia? Honesty, the list goes on and on. I shall return to London to get some head shots done very soon, and then we shall see what I can make happen.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I wanted to write a novel that examined how people can become trapped, not just by their circumstances but also by the stories they tell themselves in their minds.

Both Pip and Evelyn are desperate to break free from lives they believe they are not destined to follow, but are dragged back as a result of events they can’t control. I wanted to think about how that might feel and how you could come to terms with having all your plans cast asunder.

A couple of people helped me to create Pip and Evelyn and I am very grateful to them both. Whilst my first career was as a solicitor and I dealt with barristers regularly, it was a long time ago and I needed to check how much things had changed. Kirsten Sjovoll of Matrix Chambers in Gray’s Inn, London, kindly gave me some of her precious time to answer all my questions.

I knew far less about Evelyn’s world and so I quizzed my good friend and actor Thomas Frere, who was able to explain how auditions and agents and such matters work.

Any mistakes or inaccuracies that I might have made in describing either world are all my own.