Polly wondered what Penzance would be like. The last time she had come here was forty-five years ago with her grand dad Burt -he had brought her to Penzance for a Bank holiday weekend treat. They had come by train then, only it took them a lot longer. Polly got off the train, a tear in her eye on her per-sonal journey.

‘All those years ago’, she said to herself as she soaked up the scenery, the cobbled streets, and thought of the ‘little Polly’ buying cough candy at the tobacconist shop on the corner and she chose a small doll in Cornish costume to give to her mother at the end of the weekend’s holiday.
Granddad was such a jolly man, Polly recalled, as she walked on, and they had a very close relation-ship. He had come to live with her mother and father when Polly was about seven, and had the box room upstairs as his bedroom. Polly’s parents were very wrapped up in their own lives as their grocery business meant early starts and late closing hours, so Polly learned to occupy herself from an early age.
Polly could remember hearing her Grandad’s greeting when she came home from school:
‘That you love, Polly, is that you? Wait a minute I’m just coming down’ Routinely these words would be accompanied by a flushing sound as he emerged from the bathroom: definitely a creature of habit!
She remembered his distinctive shuffle, a slight limp, his rough cheek brushing on hers as he gave her a raspberry kiss and chuckled, but most of all she couldn’t think of him without remembering his smell: twist tobacco. Lighting his pipe and puffing away was who granddad was. Polly remembered the pipe cleaners and the tapping that he did onto the ashtray: the rolling of the tobacco, and the way thinking and speaking seemed to go with the puffing. A lot of the time he lived in his little room at the top of the stairs, and read but when she was home they were company for each other. ‘No trouble, are we? You and me, eh? No trouble at all!’

‘Here on holiday?’ the young waitress said to Polly with a distinctive Cornish burr.’

‘Just visiting these parts’

Polly bought herself a fish and chip meal, a pot of tea, bread and butter, it was delicious an ideal thing to have somewhere like Penzance. She knew she would return again some day; this would be a ‘home’ place, for the rest of her life. The trick of light from the sea was superb and transformed the colour washed cottages.

5.20pm and Polly managed to find a window seat again and took out her book wondering what Maria was getting up to: she liked her plucky spirit, and imagined they really got on, as sisters. She was a bit less certain about how the character of Fleur was going to develop. She couldn’t put her finger on it but there was something sad about her and at present she was just a bit too goody two shoes for her own good. Then Polly found herself worrying about what she’d have to do with it all when she’d finished reading:
‘Stop it! Polly’, she heard her inner voice tell her, ‘Stop looking ahead, stay in the now enjoy the story, enjoy your journey’