‘Oh,’ she said in as light a tone as she could muster. ‘They’re all right really. You just have to know how to handle them.’

‘Oh, hark at her,’ laughed Ted. ‘Miss Worldly Wise over there.’

He was teasing her and that was fine, but she wasn’t sure when she had ever felt less worldly wise.

15

2019

The diary was dated 1983 and immediately Pip’s curiosity was piqued. Was the author a regular diary-keeper? Was this one of a set and if so, how come it had been separated from its companions? Maybe whoever had donated it made a choice to dispose of that specific year. She pictured a set of diaries on a shelf and someone selecting the year that they wanted to eradicate. This seemed an unlikely answer to the conundrum of why the diary had wound up at the shop, but the idea pleased her. What if it were that easy to remove the last six months from her own life? Would she do it? In a heartbeat, she decided. In a heartbeat.

However, it was far more likely to be by unhappy accident that this volume had ended up in the donation box. Well, unhappy for the owner, perhaps, but happy for her.

The diary was A5 in size and the cover was printed with tiny orange daisies, bright and cheerful-looking, and each with a yellow dot at its centre. Pip ran the pad of her finger over the embossed 1983 and tussled with the ethics of what she was about to do, concluding yet again that the contents of the diary couldn’t be that private if its owner had given it away.

In her heart, though, she knew this wasn’t right. No one would give away a diary on purpose. If you didn’t want it, then you’d destroy it somehow. The fact that this one had ended up in a box of books in a charity shop could only mean it was there by mistake. But, she reasoned, it was a mistake she might be able to rectify if she just read a little of its contents to see if she could identify the author. As ethical arguments went, this was thin at best, but what did it really matter? This wasn’t a court of law.

Satisfied, after a fashion, with her ragged logic, Pip lifted the cover. And there was the answer to her question on the very first page. Alongside the printed words, ‘This diary belongs to . . .’ was written in neat block capitals EVELYN MOUNTCASTLE.

Pip’s heart sank. That was it then. Mission accomplished. It belonged to one Evelyn Mountcastle and she had discovered this without having to read a single private word. Now all she had to do was discover the whereabouts of the owner and return it. Job done.

But that was no good. Pip was ready for an exploration of someone else’s world just for a little while, for a heathy dollop of escapism. Didn’t she deserve that, at least? Her own life was broken, possibly beyond repair. Surely someone up there should be cutting her some slack.