Judging by the state of the house, though, it didn’t look as if Evelyn had many visitors. That might be because visitors weren’t welcome, or just that there was no one to visit her. Pip wondered where Scarlet was now. Maybe she no longer lived locally. She indulged herself with a little fantasy that Evelyn’s daughter had also become an actress and picked up where Evelyn had left off. There would be a kind of neatness to that which appealed to Pip. It might also explain why the house looked so down at heel. Scarlet could be living in London or maybe she had moved abroad. Perhaps she had a job on a cruise ship entertaining the passengers. Pip smiled to herself as she invented a whole life for the little girl. Of course, she would be in her mid-thirties by now, which felt odd, as the little Scarlet who came dancing into Pip’s bedroom each night was still a child, not yet even old enough to be at school.

Pip had reached August 1983 in the diary now. She had been reading the entries after dinner, letting herself become absorbed in Evelyn and Scarlet’s simple lives. According to the diary, they led a quiet existence with very little happening to them on a daily basis, but, as well as complaints about how badly Joan treated them, the handwritten pages were also filled with Evelyn’s daily thoughts, some of which Pip didn’t properly understand.

Sometimes, when S is having her nap and I’m doing my household chores, I let my imagination roam back to how things might have been if she had never come along. Into the Blue is about to start its second season. It’s been a great success, just as I knew it would be. Julian must still be furious at all that lost commission! I think it’s so popular because the storylines aren’t just all car chases and drinking. They’re about real women and how they juggle their jobs with being wives and mothers. Ironic, really, seeing as that’s exactly what I can’t seem to do.

And I have to admit that the girl playing my part has made a decent job of it, even if I would have been better. I can’t think about that for too long, though, because it makes me cross. It’s so unfair. The only thing I did wrong was to be naive. Yet I’m the one who was punished and is still being punished to this day. He doesn’t even know that he has a daughter – not that I would ever tell him – but in my head, if I ever saw him again, I would make sure he knew how badly I’ve been treated.