Belonging Read Online Free

It’s the movement that makes everything look solid but really it isn’t. It’s an illusion, which means it looks real but it isn’t. The Sanskrit word for it is ‘lila’, which means ‘sport’ or ‘play’. It’s a girl’s name too. Shiva is the Creator, but also the Destroyer, and when he opens his third eye the illusion will dissolve and the world will end. Mr. Mukherjee says Hindus believe that this is the last age of our earth – the Kali Yuga – when the world will be destroyed and everything will be burned to ashes.
    I asked Father about it but he wasn’t listening. He told me that he has been thinking about what Mrs. Hewitt and the mems said: that I am growing up and that it’s time for me to get to know my English relatives, although there is only one – my aunt Wilhelmina. He said that her father has died and she is all alone and he has written to ask her if she would like to come and live with us.
    I asked him if Aunt Wilhelmina was his sister and he looked at me as though I was stupid and said, ‘Mina is your mother’s sister. Her twin sister. Surely you knew that?’ I was so surprised when he mentioned my mother that I couldn’t think of anything to say, even though there were lots of things I wanted to know. He said that Aunt Mina is a sensible woman who will be able to teach me about manners and clothes and how to behave in polite company, which he is not able to teach me, being just a rough soldier. I thought she sounded like a mem, but then I remembered that she and my mother were twins.
    I was afraid he’d be angry but I really wanted to know so I asked if she looks like my mother but he just said he hasn’t seen her for many years. He still didn’t seem upset so I asked him what my mother’s name was. He looked shocked and said, ‘Surely you must know that! Her name was Cecily.’ I wanted to say, ‘How could I know when you never told me?’ but his scar twitched and I didn’t dare.
    I thought about my mother in bed last night. I couldn’t really think about her before because I didn’t know anything about her, but now I can imagine her. Father was fair when he was younger, Kishan Lal says, and he has very blue eyes, but my hair and eyes are dark. She must have been dark, then, like Rebecca in Ivanhoe , and like me. I am like her – like my mother. Cecily is a pretty name. I wonder if it’s my fault that she died and whether Father blames me. All I have of hers is a small pebble with a hole through it that I wear on a cord around my neck. Kishan Lal told me once that it had belonged to her and was some kind of magic charm. He said it kept me safe and that it was God’s will that I survived. I asked what he meant but he wouldn’t tell me.

Cecily
SS Candia, 16th September 1855
    Dearest Mina,
    It has only been a few days and already I miss you more than I can express. It was not until the boat pulled away from the quay and I saw the distance growing between us that I realised what I have done. I had forgot that we have never spent a night apart before, and I feel as though I have been cut in two, and have left the wisest, cleverest and best part of myself behind! I know that you and Mama think I am too young to marry a man so much older than myself, and travel so far from home, but, in all the excitement of shopping for my trousseau and planning my journey, I scarcely had time to consider the future. It is strange to imagine being married to Arthur – even writing his name, rather than ‘Major Langdon’, feels peculiar! – and I cannot imagine us ever being as easy together as James and Louisa. Of course they are closer in age than Arthur and I are, whereas I always feel like a child when I am with him. I know they were surprised when they met me at Southampton and learnt I was only nineteen.
    When I told James that I was in awe of Arthur he said he had always regarded Arthur as a sort of god, because hewas ten years older and seemed so much wiser, and then of course