This was all Pip’s doing. The young woman had wandered into her life and, without meaning to, had turned something on inside her that Evelyn thought had been painted over and could never move again. Evelyn wished she could return the favour. The poor girl was in limbo, not able to move forward with her life and too scared to go back. There wasn’t much she could do practically, but she could talk to her, encourage her to address the things that were haunting her. Bottling things up was no way to carry on. That way madness lay, she thought knowingly as she cast her eyes around the devastation that was her kitchen. And after all, wasn’t that precisely what Pip had done for her? Talking about Scarlet for the first time in so very long had released fresh memories of her in Evelyn’s mind. She had been frightened of extracting them before, worried they might have fragmented into something irretrievable, but the Scarlet who had danced into her mind had been as vivid as ever and not at all tainted by time.

Talking to Pip had also altered her feelings towards Joan, from a blind fury to something less destructive. When Pip had voiced her anger at Joan’s behaviour, it had felt to Evelyn as though some of the burden she had carried for so long had been lifted. It was true what they said: a trouble shared is a trouble halved. Now Evelyn had to see what she could do to halve Pip’s trouble, too.

A knock on the front door rang out and made Evelyn jump. She clutched at her heart as she waited for its pace to slow. Her newfound freedoms weren’t all-encompassing yet, then. A visitor could still send her into a tailspin. She decided she would just ignore whoever it was and wait for them to leave. She made herself stand very still, even though there was no way the person at the door would be able to see her, while she waited for them to go away.

‘Evelyn?’ came the now-familiar voice through the door. ‘It’s me, Pip. Are you there?’

Evelyn let her breath out in a sigh of relief. Pip.

‘Yes,’ she called. ‘I’m just coming.’

With a final, regretful look at the mess she had made in clearing the mess that had been there before, she hurried to the front door and opened it.

Pip looked dreadful. Her skin was sallow and there were dark stripes under either eye but she was smiling like the cat who’d got the cream.

‘You look awful,’ said Evelyn. Being old meant she could enjoy a degree of honesty that other, less senior people had to restrain.