Harriet Evans - Love Always - A sweeping summer read full of dark family secrets from the Sunday Times bestselling author

‘Careful, darling,’ she drawls. ‘Someone’s going to get killed on those steps if they’re not careful.’

Shaken, he reaches the bottom, and she comes towards him, handing him a cigarette, laughing. ‘So clumsy,’ she says, and he hates her in that moment, hates how sophisticated and smooth she is, so heedless of what she’s doing, how wrong it is . . . He takes the cigarette but does not light it. He pulls her towards him instead, kissing her wet, plump pink lips, and she gives a little moan, wriggling her slim body against his. He can feel himself getting hard already, and her fingers move down his body, and he pushes her against the rock, and they kiss again.

‘Have you always been this bad?’ he asks her afterwards, as they are smoking their cigarettes. The heat of the sun is drying the sweat on their bodies. They lie together on the tiny beach, sated, as the waves crash next to them. A lost sandal, relic of someone else’s wholly innocent summer day, is bobbing around at the edge of the tide. The cigarette is thick and rancid in his mouth. Now it’s over, as ever, he is feeling sick.

She turns to him. ‘I’m not bad.’

He thinks she is. He thinks she is evil, in fact, but he can’t stay away from her. She smiles slowly, and he says, without knowing why he needs to say it, ‘Look, it’s been lots of fun. But I think it’s best if—’ He trails off. ‘Break it off.’

Her face darkens for a second. ‘You pompous ass.’ She laughs, sharply. ‘“Break it off”? Break what off? There’s nothing to break off. This isn’t . . . anything.’

He is aware that he sounds stupid. ‘I thought we should at least discuss it. Didn’t want to give you the—’ God, he wishes it were over. He finds himself giving her a little nod. ‘Give you the wrong impression.’

‘Oh, that’s very kind of you.’ She stubs the cigarette into the wet sand, and stands up, pulling the towel off the ground and around her again. He can’t tell if she’s angry or relieved, or – what? This is all beyond him, and it strikes him again that he’s glad it will be over and that soon he can go back to being himself again, boring, ordinary, out of all this, normal.

‘It’s been –’ he begins.

‘Oh, fuck you,’ she says. ‘Don’t you dare.’ She turns to go, but as she does something comes tumbling down the steps. It is a small piece of black slate.

And then there is a noise, a kind of thudding. Footsteps.

‘Who’s there?’ he says, looking up, but after the white light of the midday sun it is impossible to see anyone on the dark steps.

In the long years afterwards, when he never spoke about this summer, what happened, he would ask himself – because there was no one else he could ask: Who? His wife? His family? Hah – if he’d been wrong about what he’d seen. For in that moment he’d swear he could make out a small foot, disappearing back up onto the path to the house.

He turns back to her. ‘Damn. Was that someone, do you think?’

She sighs. ‘No, of course not. The path’s crumbling, that’s all. You’re paranoid, darling.’ She says lightly, ‘As if they’d ever believe it of you, anyway. Calm down. Remember, we’re supposed to be grown-ups. Act like one.’

She puts one hand on the rope and hauls herself gracefully up. ‘Bye, darling,’ she says, and he watches her go. ‘Don’t worry,’ she calls. ‘No one’s going to find out. It’s our little secret.’

But someone did. Someone saw it all.

PART ONE

February 2009

Chapter One

It is 7:16 a.m.

The train to Penzance leaves at seven-thirty. I have fifteen minutes to get to Paddington. I stand in a motionless Hammersmith and City line carriage, clutching the overhead rail so hard my fingers ache. I have to catch this train; it’s a matter of life and death.

Quite literally, in fact – my grandmother’s funeral is at two-thirty today. You’re allowed to be an hour late for dinner, but you can’t be an hour late for a funeral. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

I’ve lived in London all my life. I know the best places to eat, the bars that are open after twelve, the coolest galleries, the prettiest spots in the parks. And I know the Hammersmith and City line is useless. I hate it. Why didn’t I leave earlier? Impotent fury washes through me. And still the carriage doesn’t move.

This morning, the sound of pattering rain on the quiet street woke me while it was still dark. I haven’t been sleeping for a while, since before Granny died. I used to complain bitterly about my husband Oli’s snoring, how he took up the whole bed, lying prone in a diagonal line. He’s been away for nearly two weeks now. At first I thought it’d be good, if only because I could catch up on sleep, but I haven’t. I lie awake, thoughts racing through my head, one wide-awake side of my brain taunting the other, which is begging for rest. I feel mad. Perhaps I am mad. Although they say if you think you’re going mad that definitely means you’re not. I’m not so sure.

7:18 a.m. I breathe deeply, trying to calm down. It’ll be OK. It’ll all be OK.

Granny died in her sleep last Friday. She was eighty-nine. The funny thing is, it still shocked me. Booking my train tickets to come down to Cornwall, in February, it seemed all wrong, as though I was in a bad dream. I spoke to Sanjay, my cousin, over the weekend and he said the same thing. He also said, ‘Don’t you want to punch the next person in the face who says, “Eighty-nine? Well, she had a good innings, didn’t she?” Like she deserved to die.’

I laughed, even though I was crying, and then Jay said, ‘I feel like something’s coming to an end, don’t you? Something bigger than all of us.’

It made me shiver, because he is right. Granny was the centre of everything. The centre of my life, of our family. And now she’s gone, and – I can’t really explain it. She was the link to so many things. She was Summercove.

We’re at Edgware Road, and it’s 7:22 a.m. I might get it. I just might still get the train.

Granny and Arvind, my grandfather, had planned for this moment. Talked about it quite openly, as if they wanted everyone to be clear about what they wanted, perhaps because they didn’t trust my mother or my uncle – Jay’s dad – to follow their wishes. I’d like to believe that’s not true, but I’m afraid it probably is. They specified what would happen when either one of them died first, what happens to the paintings in the house, the trust that is to be set up in Granny’s memory, the scholarship that is funded in Arvind’s memory, and what happens to Summercove.

Arvind is ninety. He is moving into a home. Louisa, my mother’s cousin, has taken charge of that. Louisa has taken charge of the funeral, too. She likes taking charge. She has picked everything that Granny didn’t leave instructions about, from the hymns to the fillings in the sandwiches for the wake afterwards (a choice of egg mayonnaise, curried chicken or cucumber). Her husband, the handsome but extremely boring Bowler Hat, will be handing out the orders of service at the funeral and topping up drinks at the wake. Louisa is organising everything, and it is very kind of her, but we feel a bit left out, Jay and I. As ever, the Leighton side of the family has got it right, with their charming English polo-shirts-andcrumpets approach to life and we, the Kapoors, are left looking eccentric, disjointed, odd. Which I suppose we are.

Cousin Louisa is also in charge of packing up the house. For Summercove is to be sold. Our beautiful white art deco house perched between the fields and the sea in Cornwall will soon be someone else’s. It is where Granny and my grandfather lived for fifty years, raised their children. I spent every summer of my life there. It’s really the only home I’ve ever known and I’m the only one, it seems, who’s sentimental about it, who can’t bear to see it go. Mum, my uncle Archie, Cousin Louisa – even my grandfather – they’re all brisk about it. I don’t understand how they can be.