Harriet Evans - Love Always

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, thankful y, 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 al 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 tel 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 pul 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 final y 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’l have someone to play with now.’

I couldn’t tel 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 sil y 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 travel ing 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.

Stil 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 smel the sea in the air. It is warmer than London, though it’s stil 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 stil 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 tal , 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 tel s me, dropping a kiss onto my head.

‘You were on the train?’

‘I looked for you, then I fel 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, spil ing 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.

Seagul s shriek overhead.

‘Jay! Sanjay! Over here!’ We look up to see my uncle Archie, leaning against his car, waving cool y 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 enthusiastical y. It’s almost his badge. He speaks with a posh English accent but at home his wife Sameena cooks the best Indian food you’l find in Ealing, a mil ion 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 whol y 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 enthusiastical y, gripping my shoulders. His moustache tickles my face as always and I have to tel myself not to shrink away. ‘It’s wonderful to see you. Jay. Son.’ He gives his son a wal oping great slap on the back. Jay rocks back against me.