It was an innocent enough question, the obvious one, in fact, but part of Evelyn still baulked at having to answer it, although she wasn’t entirely sure why. How could it possibly matter now?

‘I got pregnant,’ she replied as boldly as she could. This was the twenty-first century and no one seemed to hide behind euphemisms as they once had. I got into trouble, I was in the family way; such expressions were quaint and antiquated in this new age of forthright and direct speech, an age that Evelyn suddenly felt the need to embrace. After all, she had thought herself progressive in the 1970s, so why not now?

Pip didn’t comment, and nothing about her facial expression suggested that she was in any way shocked. Either she didn’t understand the ramifications of the words, or she didn’t consider them to be anything other than a statement of fact. Evelyn wasn’t sure which it was, but surely it would be the latter.

Encouraged, she pressed on. ‘It was a bit of a scandal at the time. I wasn’t married or even in a relationship with the father. I’d also just been cast in a huge role in a television drama series that would have sealed my career, and I gave it all up. There was no support for single mothers back then, so I had to make a choice. The baby or the job. I chose the baby, but I couldn’t support myself and so I had no option but to slink back up here. My parents were dead by then, but my sister Joan took a very dim view of it all.’

‘Is that her in the picture in the other room?’ Pip asked. ‘The miserable-looking one?’ She turned around and winked at Evelyn, but then immediately looked unsure of herself, as if she feared she had been too familiar, stepped over some invisible line.

‘Yes. That’s her,’ Evelyn replied, and rolled her eyes to show that no offence had been taken. ‘Joan was miserable as a child and she never grew out of it,’ she said. ‘Once I got up here, she made my life as wretched as she could.’

Evelyn saw Pip nod as if she already knew that and was entirely sympathetic.

‘I had no money, so she had to keep me, and boy, did she let me know how much she disapproved of the whole situation. It was ridiculous really. She was living here on the money our parents left us. I had just as much entitlement to it as she did. But she held the cheque book. She made me feel bad about myself every single day.’