Love Always Read Online Free PDF Page A

off the train. From that day on I stopped looking for him. Like Granny’s beauty, it became one of those things that’s just a fact, rather than a changeable situation. The sea is blue. Granny has a scar on her little finger. You don’t know your dad.
    The sea isn’t always blue though. Sometimes it’s green. Or grey. Or almost black like tar, with roiling, foaming white waves.
    * * *
    The sound of movement around me wakes me and I look up, startled. St Michael’s Mount looms up in the distance, the battlements and towers of the old castle rising out of the water, glinting in the midday sun. When I was a child the holidays were one long effort on my part to persuade whomever I could to take me, walk across the glittering causeway to the castle at low tide, climb up to the turreted towers, and look out across the bay to Penzance or out to sea.
    ‘Welcome to Penzance. Penzance is our final destination. Thank you for travelling with First Great Western. May we wish you a pleasant onward journey,’ a voice intones over the loudspeaker, and there is the usual rush around me as I rub my eyes, tasting something sour in my mouth. Still in a daze, I jump up, stretching, and climb off the train, nearly bumping into someone on the platform. I look up and around me. I am here.
    You can smell the sea in the air. It is warmer than London, though it’s still February and the wind is sharp. I huddle into my coat as I reach the end of the platform, wondering who’s come to meet me. Mum said she or Archie would. People saunter past; there’s no bustling and jostling like Paddington. It still does always remind me of The Railway Children .
    ‘Nat?’ A voice floats across the hordes of people. ‘Natasha!’
    I glance up.
    ‘Natasha! Over here!’
    I look behind me and there is Jay, my beloved cousin. He is striding towards me, so tall, smiling sort of sheepishly. He folds me in his arms and I close my eyes, sinking into his embrace. When Jay is here, everything is always a bit better. He’s one of those people who leaves a gap when he exits a room.
    ‘It’s good to see you,’ he tells me, dropping a kiss onto my head.
    ‘You were on the train?’
    ‘I looked for you, then I fell asleep. I had a late night, we were working through.’ Jay is a website designer; he works crazy hours, but he stays out crazy hours too. ‘I had to get some sleep.’ He squeezes me tight. ‘This is a sad day.’
    I nod and link my arm through his as we walk outside, into the fresh air.
    The car park is next to the harbour, where ships and boats of every kind over the centuries have arrived and disem-barked, spilling out silks and spices and foods and wines from the furthest corners of the world. The riggings clatter against the masts, tinkling loudly in the gusting breeze. Seagulls shriek overhead.
    ‘Jay! Sanjay! Over here!’ We look up to see my uncle Archie, leaning against his car, waving coolly at us.
    I always forget when I first see him how much my uncle reminds me of those older male models, the kind you see in ads for cruises and dentures. Like my mother, he was very handsome when he was younger: I’ve seen the photos. Now, he’s like someone from a bygone era; suave, inter national, at ease in any situation. Today he’s in a dark suit but his usual uniform is a blazer, dark trousers, immaculate pressed pink or blue checked shirts with big gold cufflinks. He has a signet ring. His Asian father and English mother have given him a dual citizenship, also like my mother, with which he struggled when he was younger, but has now embraced extremely enthusiastically. It’s almost his badge. He speaks with a posh English accent but at home his wife Sameena cooks the best Indian food you’ll find in Ealing, a million times better than most of the ropey curry houses on the main drag of Brick Lane.
    Jay and I are very similar, but I love how his dad and my mum, the twins, half Indian, went different ways. With me, my Indian heritage is hardly