Evelyn drew in her breath when she saw it, then reached for it with a wavering hand. She held it for a moment before dropping it into her lap. A strange sense of loss came over Pip as she relinquished it. She had no rights over the diary, but she was reluctant to give it up, much like Bilbo Baggins with the precious ring.

‘Would you tell me about your acting?’ Pip asked, to break the tension.

Now that the diary had been returned, her hold over Evelyn was all but gone – unless she let it be known that she had read it, of course, but she was reluctant to do that at this point. She smiled as she spoke and tried to look charming, hoping that the joint temptation of a conversation and the opportunity to share something of her past would be enough to tempt Evelyn to open up a little. She could see that Evelyn was weighing up the pros and cons of allowing her to stay now that the diary had been returned. After a moment’s hesitation, she appeared to choose conversation, and the tension ebbed a little from her narrow shoulders.

She took a breath and returned Pip’s smile with one that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

‘I worked mainly in London in the 1970s,’ she said, ‘which will have been before you were even born. I did a little stage work and some things for television. There were only three channels back then, of course, so you tended to be recognised in the street a little, but most actors weren’t thought of as being famous at all. The Queen was famous, and The Beatles, but not television actors.’

‘How refreshing,’ Pip replied. ‘It isn’t healthy the way we treat celebrities these days. Not for them or us.’

Evelyn didn’t agree or even react to the comment, and Pip wasn’t sure she had understood her meaning, but then she supposed that if Evelyn had been living here as a virtual recluse, she would have no idea what the tabloids had made into their bread and butter.

‘Anyway, I had ten years living that life,’ Evelyn continued, ‘and then . . .’ She paused. She appeared to be considering what to say next, how much information to share. Did she assume, Pip wondered, that she hadn’t read the diary? She felt her stomach squirm. ‘And then things changed,’ Evelyn continued neutrally. ‘I moved back up here, and this is where I’ve been ever since.’

As a story it was unsatisfactory, Pip thought, for without including the real reason why she had left London, it was bland and unremarkable, but it appeared to be all she was prepared to give her for now.