Reluctantly Home

by Imogen Clark

A fear of being caught and causing disappointment was the greatest deterrent of all.

1979

She had always defined herself by what she did rather than by who she was, by what she wore on the outside instead of what was happening on the inside.

Drifting with neither rudder to steer her nor anchor to hold her safe. It was terrifying.

Nothing seemed to touch her any more, nothing could pierce the carapace that she had enclosed herself in because no emotional hurt could be as terrible or as devastating as the one she was already dealing with. Or not dealing with.

She assumed that her situation would work in her favour when it came to persuading a doctor she was in need of help. She was unmarried, without a boyfriend or even any relationship with the father of her child, and no steady income. Anyone could see that she wasn’t best placed to bring a child into the world. She could just take herself off, get it sorted, and no one need ever know. But she would know. She would know, and that knowledge would eat away at her for the rest of her life.

Innate sense of guilt from a mother

The trouble was, she hadn’t imagined it would happen just yet. She had no husband, wasn’t even close to getting married, and more importantly, she had just landed the job of her dreams, which would open up a whole world of possibilities. Evelyn Mountcastle was on the cusp of everything she had ever wanted for her career. Surely, that ought to make her decision an easy one. And yet . . .

Pip had prompted many an argument by complaining about the gender-stereotypical way her parents ran the farm. Now, though, she could see that even though her father did labour in the fields whilst her mother tended to hearth and home, this arrangement actually served them very well. They were a team. Her father could not work as well as he did on the farm without her mother providing him with hearty meals, clean clothes and a safe, warm home to come back to, and without the money her father earned, her mother would have to look for work elsewhere, which would prevent her from running the house. On top of that, each of them was happy with their allocated tasks and wouldn’t have wanted to do either what the other did, or, indeed, anything else. Gender-defining though the arrangement was, their lives were symbiotic, each one vital to the well-being of the other. It was a true partnership.

Today was a Friday.

greet the delivery man. It was always a man, she’d noticed. In all the years her groceries had been delivered, it had never once been a woman who brought them.

Surely, things had moved on. It was far more likely that women didn’t want to do the job, she concluded. It couldn’t be much fun, shifting crates all day and having other women give you orders about where to put everything.

The

A strange sense of loss came over Pip as she relinquished it. She had no rights over the diary, but she was reluctant to give it up, much like Bilbo Baggins with the precious ring.

‘It isn’t healthy the way we treat celebrities these days. Not for them or us.’

It was only when I got to university that I realised how sheltered my life here had been. All at once, I was surrounded by new people and new points of view. Things that I had never even considered suddenly seemed to be hugely important to everyone else. Politics, art, philosophy; there was so much to learn, so much I needed to know. And I needed to do it quickly, before anyone noticed how unsophisticated I was.’

‘You were reinventing yourself,’ Evelyn said, and Pip nodded urgently. That was exactly it. Evelyn had hit the nail on the head. ‘Don’t we all do that,’ Evelyn continued, ‘to a greater or lesser extent? Not everyone goes as far as to change their name to shed their old skin, though many do, but trying to become something new is a human affliction.’

Evelyn closed

‘The damage done by sudden death is devastating and irreversible,’ Evelyn continued, her voice low and very calm as if she were preaching or delivering a sentence. ‘Attaching blame can only take you so far. Believe me, I know. Just because everyone says it wasn’t your fault doesn’t mean that you can move on. But you do owe it to yourself to try. You’re young, Pip, with your whole life ahead of you. You mustn’t let that one terrible moment blight your entire future. Yes, you’ll feel guilt. That’s only to be expected. It’s misplaced, but it’s unavoidable. But you can’t let it define who you are for the rest of your life. I let that happen to me.

‘I’m not sure that’s such a terrible way to look at it,’ she said. ‘Things have a way of working out like that. I’d agree it was the universe stepping in if I believed in any of that kind of thing. I can’t say that Joan deserved to die for what she did, but I can’t say that I’m sorry.’

It was true what they said: a trouble shared is a trouble halved.

‘This was the one and only occasion on which such a thing happened. And this one shouldn’t have, either. But if it hadn’t, I would never have had my darling Scarlet, and I wouldn’t have been without her, no matter what I had to put up with.’

She had read the

‘I always think,’ said Evelyn, ‘that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.’

wanted to write a novel that examined how people can become trapped, not just by their circumstances but also by the stories they tell themselves in their minds.