Pip wondered what could have happened to her to bring her so low. Maybe she had just had her spirit crushed by being trapped here and not being able to get back to her former life. There was a lesson in that, Pip thought, but she didn’t want to go there. Her situation was entirely different, she told herself. She wasn’t trapped like Evelyn had been. She had money and a job that she loved to go back to whenever she was well enough. Her stay in Southwold was temporary, just whilst she got herself together. Evelyn might still be here all these decades later, but that definitely didn’t mean she, Pip, would be. She was starting to sound desperate, even to herself.

She pushed the idea of getting stuck out of her head. It made for uncomfortable thinking, and instead she pulled her thoughts back to the house over the road and the reason she had come. There was only one way to find out if Evelyn Mountcastle was still living there and discover what had become of her. She was going to have to knock on the door and introduce herself.

Pip felt an unfamiliar flutter of something approaching excitement at the thought. She was almost halfway through the diary now, and was certain that she would like Evelyn Mountcastle if she met her. It wasn’t just the parallels she could see between their lives. There was something else about her: a drive, a thirst that Pip recognised in herself. If she knocked on the door and got her into conversation, she felt sure they would get along rather well.

But that would be an adventure for another day. It wasn’t even nine in the morning, and so far too early to call, and anyway, Pip wanted to get to the end of the diary before she relinquished it. She would come back when she had read the whole thing, explain who she was and then hand it over. Perhaps she could gather a little more information about Evelyn Mountcastle the actress in the meantime, see if she couldn’t get the old lady to invite her inside the house by employing a bit of flattery.