Pip’s thoughts skipped to Dominic, to his face as he told her was leaving, but she closed the images down as soon as they popped up.

‘Pretty quiet,’ she said. Her mind raced as she tried to think how to get the information she wanted without arousing any awkward cross-questioning, but in the end she just said, ‘Audrey, do you happen to know someone called Evelyn Mountcastle?’

Audrey was rearranging a selection of notelets, moving the less popular designs to the front of the stand. ‘Evelyn Mountcastle, the actress?’ she asked, without looking up. ‘Not to speak to, although I’d recognise her if I saw her in the street. Not that you’re likely to see her in the street.’

There was so much tantalising information in this reply that for a moment Pip was thrown off course as she decided which part to chase first.

‘I didn’t know she was an actress,’ she began, although of course she did.

‘Oh, yes,’ replied Audrey, drawing out the syllables and thus revealing that there was a story to tell. ‘Quite well known in the seventies, I gather. But there was a scandal of some sort and she came back to Southwold and then . . . Well, it was so tragic.’ Audrey shook her head mournfully.

‘What happened?’ asked Pip, trying not to sound like a rubbernecker, but desperate to know all the same.

‘That house was full of misfortune,’ Audrey continued. ‘It’s no wonder she went a little doolally. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you? Send anyone a bit mad, something like that.’

Something like what? Pip was bursting to ask, but then a customer called over from the back of the shop needing some help with a zip and Audrey bustled off, leaving Pip with half a story.

As the day wore on, Pip tried to create opportunities to ask Audrey more about Evelyn Mountcastle, but without success. She was reluctant to just come straight out with her questions in case she somehow gave away that she had taken the diary, which she knew Audrey would take a very dim view of.

On the other hand, Pip thought as she sorted clothes into piles, Audrey seemed to know everything about everybody in the town. And if she didn’t know, she made it her business to find out. Pip might do better not to delve any deeper with the inquisitive Audrey, instead she should try to find the information she wanted from another, less curious, source.

She immediately thought of Jez. He clearly knew a little about the family, and Pip was pretty sure he wouldn’t care why she wanted to know. Plus, it would give her the chance to spend some time with him. After their encounter in the kitchen, she thought she might be ready for that, enjoy it even.

As the day drew to a close, Pip decided that she would spend the evening in her bedroom with the diary. She wasn’t really up to sitting with her parents. They would ask how she was after Dominic’s departure and she didn’t want to get into that.