She shelved her carefully nurtured integrity and turned the page.

The writer’s expansive, cursive handwriting flowed over the creamy paper, gushing forth like water from a spring, all bubbles and effervescence. Even without reading the words, Pip could see the enthusiasm with which they had been written by the short, punchy sentences, the frequency of exclamation marks. There weren’t bubbles over the ‘i’s but there might as well have been.

You could tell a lot from someone’s handwriting, Pip knew, and this suggested a person with a zest for life, a natural exuberance. Pip’s own writing was neat and easy to read, but also rather boring. As a girl she had longed for a more distinctive style, even trying out various options with a view to switching to something with a little more personality, only for her writing to slip back to type whenever she stopped thinking about enhancing it.

But this was totally different, and from her handwriting alone, Evelyn Mountcastle looked like someone that Pip might like. She tried to calculate how old Evelyn might be now, but without any details of her life it was hard to work it out. Pip’s analytical mind began whirring. In the entries she had already read, Evelyn had a daughter, Scarlet, who seemed to be very young. So, say Evelyn had been thirty in 1983, she would be somewhere in her sixties now. That meant that there was a good chance she was still alive. The books and diary could have surfaced through a house clearance after her death, but it seemed unlikely.

Pip took a deep breath and then made a conscious decision to begin reading.

January 1st 1983

Happy birthday me!

In my life before Scarlet (B.S. if you will), I would probably have been at some sensational party as the clock struck midnight and time slipped me into my birthday. I’d most probably have been leaping about, making sure everyone knew that it was now me and not the turn of the year that required their attention. Honestly, I can barely remember those carefree days now. They feel like they happened to someone else, and in a different lifetime.

As 1983 began, I was tucked up in bed rather than celebrating at a party (although I wasn’t asleep – I do still have some vestiges of fun left in me and the turning of the year is something that should be marked, no matter how quietly). There was a party going on down the street somewhere and I could hear the revellers as they barrelled past the house on their way home. I also heard Joan open her window and bellow at them to be quiet because decent people were trying to sleep. Ironically, Joan probably woke more people with her caterwauling than the revellers had done. Now there’s a woman who doesn’t understand the concept of fun!

And then, a few short, sweet hours later I was woken by Scarlet who snuck into my room and my bed, pushing her cold little feet against my warm ones. She’d even remembered that it was my birthday, which is very impressive for a three-year-old. But then she is a very impressive child.