Love Always (3 page)

I’m trying not to cry at the same time, pushing my hair out of my mouth. I stand up and look in the mirror, tears running down my cheeks, because I feel so awful, so sad, every protective layer I cover myself with ripped off and suddenly the almost cartoon terribleness of it makes me start to laugh. Suddenly I remember Cathy saying to me, ‘Has anyone ever explained to Oli that when he signs off with his initial and a kiss he’s writing the word “Ox”?’

I smile, I look dreadful, lank brown hair hanging about my sallow face, dark brown shadows under my startlingly green eyes. People at school called me alien because of my eyes; I hated it. I hadn’t thought of that for ages either and it makes me smile again. I wipe my mouth on a tissue. I will go to the canteen and get a coffee, a banana. I feel better, purged.

Slowly, I open the door, embarrassed in case someone is outside and has overheard, and I hear two voices, approaching briskly.

‘My best guess is we’ll be five mins late, no more,’ the first, a male voice, is saying.

‘I’ll call Mummy. God knows she’s got enough to do without us holding her up today.’

I freeze.
No way.

‘Bloody good thing Guy’s already there,’ the male voice says, languidly, but with a hint of menace I remember of old. ‘We need someone to sort through that house, make sure the valuable stuff gets treated properly. I mean, those paintings must be worth a bob or two . . .’

Julius and Octavia.
I shrink back against the door as they march past, catching only a glimpse of Octavia’s sensible brown flat boots and grey wool skirt and her hand, clutching a twenty-pound note, as they stride purposefully past on their way to the buffet car, a Leighton phalanx of aggressive righteousness. I don’t know why it surprises me – this is the only train from London that gets to Penzance in time for the funeral, but of all people Julius and Octavia are not who I would have chosen to bump into, post-vomit, outside the First Great Western lav.

They are Louisa’s children, and so they are my second cousins, and though I spent almost every summer of my life with them, there is no emotional connection to show for it. If you knew Octavia and Julius, though, you might understand why. They have even been given Roman names, I think to reflect their parents’ passion for discipline and order. I hear Julius’s posh voice again.
‘Bloody good thing Guy’s already there.’

My skin prickles with silent rage. Guy is their uncle on their father’s side. He is an antiques dealer. I never knew he was close to Granny, or our family. I grit my teeth at the thought of Guy going through Granny’s paintings, her jewel-lery box, with Louisa standing behind with a clipboard, ticking stuff off on a list. They are very
definite
people, the Leightons. I love Louisa, she’s kind and thoughtful, and she does mean well, I think, but she can be dreadfully bossy. The four of them, her, the Bowler Hat, Julius and Octavia, are all terribly – not hearty exactly, more –
confident
. The confidence that comes from living in Tunbridge Wells, being a civil servant, going to a public school, being a unit of four, a proper family. All things I am not.

I wait until their voices have faded into the distance and cautiously, I creep back to my seat, a little shaky still, and stare out of the window again. Two fat crows are picking away at the mossy roof of a disused barn. Above them, the skies are opening wider and wider, and birds wheel through the air. We’re getting there, we are nearly in Exeter. My phone buzzes again.

I can’t keep saying I’m sorry. We have to talk. Thinking of you today. When are you back? Ox

Ox. I switch my phone off and close my eyes, turning my head to the window in case the others walk past, and, thankfully, I drift off to sleep.

Chapter Three

It’s always been me and my mother. I don’t know my father. Mum met him at a party, he was a one-night stand and she never saw him again. I found this out when I was a teenager; I had no idea where he was before that. When I was about ten, and impressionable, I saw
The Railway Children
, and it all suddenly became perfectly clear to me: my father was away, somewhere, but he would come back one day soon. He had been wrongly imprisoned, like Roberta’s daddy, he was on a ship sailing around the world, rescuing people, he was a doctor helping famine victims in Africa, he was a famous actor in America and couldn’t tell people about me and Mum. He was a person in my life, absent for the moment, but he would come back.

One summer, Granny drove me to Penzance; she said she had a surprise for me at the station, and I knew it then with absolute certainty, the kind of certainty that has got me into trouble my whole life. We were going to meet my dad off the train, and he would fling his arms open wide and smile, and I would run towards him, crying, ‘Daddy! My daddy!’ He would hug me tight, and kiss my forehead, and come home with me and Granny, and then he would take me and Mum away from the damp Hammersmith flat to a beautiful castle in the countryside, and we would live – yes, we would – happily ever after.

Under my breath, the rest of the way there, I tried the unfamiliar words out on my tongue. Dad. Daddy. Hi Dad. By the time we got to the station, I was jiggling my legs up and down, I was so excited. Granny had a watchful, sparkling look in her eyes. She kept glancing at me as we waited for the train to pull in to the platform, holding my hand in hers as she was afraid I’d simply run off, mad with anticipation. She was right, I remember it, I felt as if I might.

When the train arrived and the teeming hordes of passengers had hurried off, when the platform was emptying and my neck was aching from craning forward, desperate to see who he was, she finally squeezed my fingers.

‘Look, there he is.’

And there was Jay with Sameena, his mum, walking down the platform, also hand in hand, only he was straining with excitement to see me, and I just looked at him, my heart sinking, sliding my hand out of Granny’s.

‘He’s come early,’ she said. ‘So you’ll have someone to play with now.’

I couldn’t tell her she’d ruined everything, that I’d rather be on my own with dreams of my dad than playing stupid Ghostbusters with Jay. I couldn’t explain how silly I’d been. How could I? She never knew, I never told her, but I couldn’t ever think about that day again. How I tried to picture what my father would look like as he got 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 visible beyond my dark hair and olive skin, thanks to a mother who uses it in a lazy cross-cultural way when she wants to show off, and thanks to a father who I assume is white, although who knows? Whereas Jay goes the other way, the reverse of me. He is almost wholly Indian, and slips easily back into that culture, thanks to Sameena, then back into the world of Summercove, as if he’s changing from one pair of comfortable shoes to another. I envy him that ability, and I love him for it.

Jay is waving back at his father. ‘Look at him,’ he says, as Archie sneaks a look at his reflection in the car window, staring intently at himself for a brief second. ‘He’s looking more and more like Alan Whicker every day. Hey, Dad,’ he says.

‘Aha, Natasha, my dear.’ Archie hugs me enthusiastically, gripping my shoulders. His moustache tickles my face as always and I have to tell myself not to shrink away. ‘It’s wonderful to see you. Jay. Son.’ He gives his son a walloping great slap on the back. Jay rocks back against me.

‘I’m sorry about Granny,’ I tell him. ‘I am too,’ Archie says soberly. ‘I am too.’ He scratches the bridge of his nose vigorously, suddenly, and turns away. ‘Let’s be off.’ His hand is on the boot of the car. ‘Bags?’

‘No bags,’ I say.

Archie looks at me as if I’m insane. ‘No bags? Where are your things?’

I take a deep breath. ‘I can’t stay tonight, unfortunately,’ I say.

He stares at me. ‘Not staying? Does your mother know? That’s crazy, Natasha.’

‘I know,’ I say, trying to sound calm, collected. ‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve got a meeting tomorrow I can’t get out of.’ I wish I could tell them why. But I can’t. They mustn’t know, not yet.

‘I should have thought . . .’ Archie mutters, trailing off. Jay, who is watching me intently, jumps in.

‘The sleeper’s much better and if you have to get back for a meeting, there it is.’ His father frowns at him, opens his mouth to say something, but Jay presses on. ‘Come on, Nat,’ he says, slinging his rucksack into the boot. ‘We’re cutting it fine anyway, aren’t we? Let’s go.’

Suddenly, I remember Octavia and Julius. ‘I saw Octavia and Julius on the train. I mean,
think
I saw them,’ I amend. ‘Should we—’

‘Oh,’ Archie says, ruffled, he hates any interruption to his plans, to being told what to do by anyone except my mother. And indeed, our cousins are emerging from the station and looking around. ‘I’m sure they’ll have made their own arrangements . . .’

But they haven’t, it turns out. Octavia and Julius are the kind of ruthlessly efficient people who expect others to be at their beck and call. They’re like the answers to those survival guide questions: both of them could survive on a raft floating on the Indian Ocean with only a mirror and a comb for days, I’m sure. But they’d never think of getting round to booking a car or a taxi. They assume that someone else will have got the train down too and will furnish them with a lift. And they assume rightly, of course.

‘I must say, it’s extremely strange we didn’t bump into either of you on the train,’ Octavia says, as Archie drives off along the harbour. ‘I suppose you two were sitting together.’ She makes it sound as if we were planning a high-school shooting.

‘No,’ Jay says simply. ‘Meeting you all is a lovely surprise on this sad day.’

‘Jolly sad. So,’ Julius, already red in the face, looking more than ever like a fatter, less patrician version of Frank, his father, asks, ‘what’s the order of things today? Straight to the church? Or nosh first?’

Squashed next to Octavia in the back of the car, Jay and I dare not exchange looks. It’s as though we’re children again.

‘Hrrr.’ Archie clears his throat, self-importantly. ‘The funeral is at two, so we’re going straight to the church,’ he says. ‘Don’t have time to stop off beforehand and we couldn’t have it any later, some people –’ he raises his eyebrows – ‘
some

people came down last night and are going back to London this evening.’ I nod politely.

‘We’ll meet the others there, then?’ Jay says. ‘Yes, yes,’ Archie says briskly, as though he’s got it all under control and supplementary questions are ridiculous. ‘Father’s going with Miranda – with your mother, Natasha – to the church. Then we’re all off back to Summercove afterwards, for some food.’

‘I know Mum’s done an
awful
lot of cooking,’ Octavia says slowly. ‘She’s been flat out all week, poor thing. It’s been pretty stressful for her.’ She sighs. ‘And clearing out the house, getting
poor
Great-Uncle Arvind settled somewhere new – I mean, we all know he’s a brilliant man, but he’s not exactly easy, is he!’ She laughs.

Don’t let Octavia wind you up
, I chant to myself.
She signed up for an Oxbridge-graduates-only online dating service and she fancies George Osborne. That is the kind of person she is
.

I would still quite like to smack her though. I hope the feeling doesn’t stay with me all day. I wish I could. I wish I could get really drunk at the wake and start a fight,
EastEnders
style. Perhaps I should. Archie and Jay are silent. I make a non-committal sound.

‘Your mum’s been wonderful,’ I force myself to say instead because it’s the truth, despite being annoying to admit. Louisa is the one who gets things done, she always has been. She is the one who’d take me into Truro to buy me new socks and shoes for the autumn term at school, muttering all the while about how someone had to do it, mind you, but still. ‘Oh, Louisa, she is wonderful,’ is sort of her shoutline. That’s what you say about her, in the absence of anything else to say.

We are climbing up and out of Penzance. Below us, the sea is frothing and churning. There are dark, restless clouds on the horizon. We drive in silence for a while, going further inland. Here on the south coast the country is wild, but lush, greener than the rest of the country, even though it’s February. We pass Celtic crosses, their intricate decorations long worn away by the wind from the sea, and soon we are driving past the Merry Maidens, the ten girls who were turned to stone for dancing on a Sunday. They’re all so familiar. It is so strange to be here when it’s not high summer, but it is so wonderful all the same, and then I remember why I’m here. Granny would have loved a day like today, walking through the winding lanes and over the high exposed fields, a silk head-scarf covering her hair, her eyes alight with the joy of it all.

In the front, Archie turns to Julius. ‘So, Julius, how are the markets?’

‘Weulllll –’ Julius begins, in his low, blubbery voice. ‘Patchy, Archie. Patchy . . .’

I am spared the rest of his answer by Octavia turning to me.

‘How’s your jewellery stuff going then?’ she asks, curiously. As ever I grit my teeth at this question, which makes it sound as though I’ve been to the Bead Shop and threaded a few plastic hearts onto a string for a friend’s birthday, rather than that it’s my job.