Summer Loving Read Online Free Page A

to set him off for half an hour. I slide my hand across the cool sheet and imagine that his strong hand will be there to meet mine, giving it a squeeze before we both drift off into unconsciousness.

 
     
    Two
     
    ‘Would you like some more coffee, my dear?’
    I push my cup over to Franklin and he pours another coffee, my third so far this morning. Breakfast here is like every other European hotel breakfast: bread, croissants, meat, jam and all the usual suspects. I’d hoped to get a proper Portuguese Breakfast, whatever that may be, but I guess you’d have to go into one of the villages for that and that’s not the sort of thing that Franklin does whenever he goes on holiday. Too much inconvenience and unpredictability. Too many foreigners.
    It’s a lovely, warm morning with just a slight, salty breeze coming off the sea. The sky is a deep blue, like you see in the Mediterranean countries further east of here. I’d like nothing better than to run down to the beach, sit on the sand and have a couple of doughnuts with a flask of coffee, but I know that even the suggestion of that would have Franklin raising his eyebrows in that way of his. Perhaps I’m being unreasonable. Maybe you grow out of that sort of thing. Maybe this is better.
    We’re having breakfast on a veranda on the third floor. It’s one of five breakfast areas and is designed to give you a good view of the wide expanse of beach and of the sea. It certainly does that, but it seems such a waste of the beach, which is tantalisingly close.
    I was dreaming about Cornwall last night, which is hardly surprising, as I’d been thinking about Kirstan, or should I say trying not to think about Kirstan.
    I’d planned to travel to France or somewhere like that during my gap year, but hadn’t really thought through what I was going to do when I got there. Work as a waitress? Be an au pair ? Busk? Lap dancer? Who knew? Suddenly, school was over and I still hadn’t sorted anything out. Luckily for me, my older sister Lucille came to the rescue.
    She’d been working in St Ives for two years at that point (As a photographer! She did physics in university, for god’s sake! I couldn’t believe it!), and she’d rented this huge place with no furniture in Polzeath, overlooking the sea. The bedrooms were the only rooms that had curtains. She’d said if I didn’t sort myself out soon I’d end up staying with her and being her housekeeper, cleaner and all-purpose slave and she was right.
    Despite the lack of the usual comforts, it had a sort of bohemian air to it, particularly with Lucille’s beautiful, eerie photographs on all the walls in clip frames. I felt relaxed in a way that I’d never experienced before.
    I was lucky enough to get a job working in the restaurant of the Tate St Ives after two weeks and was looking forward to a year of doing nothing except reading, getting drunk with Lucille and taking long beach walks while admiring the sea birds. I might even help Lucille with her photography. Maybe help her develop her pictures or something. It didn’t look that difficult, though she assured me it was highly skilled and that I would probably poison myself with the chemicals or burn a hole in the floor.
    *
    Franklin makes a face. ‘Is your coffee alright, Saskia, my dear? Mine tastes a little – I don’t know – too bitter , if that’s the right word. I’ll call the chap over.’
    ‘Mine’s fine. Maybe it’s the salty air.’
    ‘Maybe. But I doubt that you’re right.’
    He raises a hand and barks at a waiter, ‘ Por favor !’
    Lucille and I would buy Danish pastries or doughnuts from the supermarket late in the afternoon and take them down to the beach with us in the morning and eat them with coffee, watching the surfers slice across even the choppiest of waves. As someone who couldn’t even swim at that time, I could never understand the appeal of surfing. It just looked so unnecessarily dangerous. And cold . The water always seemed