She could hear her parents’ concerned whispering as she left the kitchen and headed up the stairs to her cramped little room.

Her father had said that he was going to bring her things ‘home’. He had meant nothing by it. Home was just the farm, where he had lived all his life. A safe haven, a port in a storm, the centre of his world. But for Pip the word was spring-loaded like a mouse trap. She had spent years ensuring that she could leave, working hard to earn her ticket out. And now, now they were going to suck her back to the very place she’d been trying to escape. It was like the pull of a whirlpool, and swim as hard as she could, she couldn’t seem to get out of it and back to safety. And not only that – they saw it as a good thing, that they were doing her a favour by bringing her ‘home’.

If Pip could have cried, then she would have done.

17

Pip retrieved the 1983 diary from its hiding place between a couple of other books on her shelves, sat back on her bed and began to read.

Evelyn seemed to live a quiet life, not dissimilar to hers in fact, although where Pip’s days had been curtailed by the accident and what had happened since, it seemed that Evelyn’s world had been shrunk by the presence of her child. It felt a little as if Evelyn was too big for the space she was occupying, as if there were more of her than there was room for in the house with Joan. And yet Pip had the impression that her spirit was being slowly crushed with each day that passed.

The diary seemed to have three themes – how much Evelyn loved Scarlet, how much she hated Joan and how unfair her life’s events had been, although Pip was struggling to work out exactly what had happened. It was something to do with why she’d left London and the fact that she was an unmarried mother. There was very little mention of her former life as an actress, but Pip could feel Evelyn’s sense of claustrophobia, her urgency to get herself and her daughter back to where she felt they belonged, together with her frustration at not being able to do so. There was also a sense, though, of making the most of the situation. Yes, Evelyn Mountcastle was unhappy at being trapped in the house with her sister, but she was still managing to find joy in little moments spent with her daughter.

The contrast with how Pip was adapting to the changes in her own life made her feel ashamed. Until now, she had spent most of her time either drilling down deep inside herself to examine her own misery, or worrying about how much longer she would have to stay where she was.

Now, though, she thought she might be starting to reconnect with her surroundings. Just that morning, she had heard a cuckoo calling from the copse behind the farm. It had been years since she had heard a cuckoo, and its distinctive cry had cut through the noise in her head so that she’d stopped what she was doing and just listened. Was it the very first time it had called that spring, she wondered, or was it merely the first time she had heard it? Either way, it felt like a step forward.