Pip had only vague memories of going crabbing herself. Her parents had always been too busy to take time away from the farm for activities like that, and by the time she was old enough to go alone she was too caught up with her studies to be interested. It did sound like the perfect day for Evelyn and Scarlet, though. She could picture them, Evelyn dressed like someone from Dexys Midnight Runners, her hair held out of her eyes with a polka-dot scarf and Scarlet in a little sundress, walking hand in hand along the beach with their bucket and line. It was such a happy, carefree image that it made Pip smile.

She flicked over the page, eager for the next day’s entry, but it was blank. That was unusual. Some days Evelyn didn’t manage to fill the entire space, but she always wrote something. Pip turned the pages over, and over again. Nothing. There was no entry for ten days. Perhaps they had gone on holiday, but surely Evelyn would have taken the diary with her, and there had been no build-up to a holiday in the diary entries.

Finally, on Tuesday 30th August the entries started up again, although the words seemed to have been formed with no care, as if Evelyn had been writing with the wrong hand or been half asleep when she wrote them.

We buried her today. Ted came. I couldn’t have got through the day without him. Peter was there, too, with his wife. Joan was not. She said she had a cold, but I know it was just an excuse. I was glad she didn’t go. I’m too angry with her just now. I wouldn’t have been able to hold it in.

I don’t know what to do without her. I don’t know how I’ll live without her. My life is over. I have nothing left.

Pip reread the words and then reread them again and again. What was it that Evelyn was saying? Was there another way of interpreting her entry other than the most obvious? But really, Pip knew.

Scarlet. Lovely little Scarlet, not yet at school. Scarlet, the light in Evelyn’s life, the centre of her universe. Scarlet was gone.

Tears pricked at Pip’s eyes and then, before she could control them, came streaming down her face. Poor Evelyn. Pip knew that to lose a child was the worst that could ever happen to a parent, causing the most unbearable, unhealable pain. She knew because she had been haunted night and day by how much it must hurt.

Nausea rose fast in her throat and she ran from her bedroom to the bathroom on the landing, only just getting there in time. She vomited noisily into the toilet bowl.

To lose a child. To kill a child. They were two sides of the same coin. Evelyn had lost Scarlet. She had killed the boy.