Paradise Read Online Free

when I’m standing at the open window, my lungs heaving, my knuckles white, gripped around the cold metal of the handle, I think of him. Of the part of me that’s missing. Not even a Luka, coming and going, in and out of my life. Never there at all. My hand relaxes on the handle, blood rushing back to the tips of my fingers, and I look up to meet the eyes of the conductor, his whistle touching his lips, waiting to see which way I’m going to go. I drop my hand and pull it inside the window. And the conductor closes his mouth around the whistle and blows.
    I’m back in my seat as the train pulls out of the station. Past the stucco terraces, past the horses under the Westway. Past the high-rise with the Polaroid army on the windowsill. Finn sees it, too. Asks if Nonno and Nonna can come and stay. “Yeah, ’course,” says Mum. But she’s not really listening. She’s not really here. She’s somewhere else, in another carriage, another time.
    Because she did it before. Caught a train along this line, but on the other side of the tracks. Left home and came to London. She erased her world, her past. Now she’s doing it again. Rubbing out the flat and the debt and the never-quite-enough of Luka.
    But then I remember something Luka said about the past. That it never really goes away, that it catches up with you, grasping at your ankles and pulling you back. Wherever you hide, it will find you in the end. And I wonder if it’s found Mum. If this is a new start. Or if she’s going back to the start.

HET WAKES
and pulls up the thick cotton blind on the sleeper car. The night-shrouded fields and gray granite walls she left behind have given way to early sunlight and the 1930s redbrick world of West London. She heaves herself upright on the narrow bunk and lets her legs drop to the floor. Leaden with sleep, they bang against the leather of her bag.
    She touches her belly, swelling now, aware that she hasn’t eaten for hours, since last night. Her last supper. Cold boiled ham, and beans from the garden. Eaten in silence, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, marking out the seconds and minutes until she could leave this family of strangers behind
.
    Her stomach gurgles and she looks up, embarrassed. But the bunk above her is empty. She is alone.
    She roots around in the front pocket of her bag until her fingers find what she is looking for. She pulls out a stick of peppermint rock and unwraps the cellophane. A slip of paper flutters to the floor, a black-and-white beach scene and the words A GIFT FROM SEATON . Het sees it but doesn’t pick it up. In an hour it will be swept away, ephemera. Like the pink letters stretching through the rock, Seaton will disappear, will be sucked into sweet sugary nothing. What’s real, what matters, is what’s in front of her. Martha’s flat, and London, and this new life inside her. Her new life.

I WAKE up with the sound of rain hammering against the reinforced glass, Mum’s breath warm in my ear, whispering that we’re here. I open my eyes to the fluorescent glare of the carriage. Outside it’s pitch-black, late now. I strain to see the landscape, but all I can make out is my own bleary-eyed reflection. The train is slowing, the wet iron of the rails squealing a protest as its brakes lock on. I stare at the window, and slowly my sleep-soaked face, Finn’s excitement, Mum’s expectation all melt away under the orange sodium glow of the platform lights, and we see where we are, where we’re going. Black letters on white, spelling out our new world: SEATON .
    “Are we here? Are we?” Finn demands, though he can read as well as me.
    Mum smiles. “We’re here. Come on. Get the bags.”
    “It’s raining,” I say, disappointment taking the edge off the fear I feel.
    For a second I think I see a glimpse of it in Mum, too. But, if it’s there, she forces practicality to push it down.
    “We’ll get a cab.”
    “Like on holiday,” says Finn.
    Mum laughs.