Alex telling me Leandro had told him about how horny a fucker I was during Leandro’s last trip to visit my family in England opened the sluice gate that unleashed a torrent of intense memories locked up in my head.
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It all started eight years previously when I picked my cousin from Brazil up from Heathrow airport early in the evening after taking the afternoon off work, with only a few photos from Facebook to go on to identify him. The last time I’d seen him in person I was visiting his family in Brazil. He had been 8 years old, and had bright blond hair, a cheeky smile and already quite a bit of attitude.
We were as thick as thieves, riding bikes around the block and spending inordinate amounts of time playing on a Mega Drive he had borrowed from a friend when I wasn’t being dragged along to visiting various relatives and their farms by my family.
After waiting about 10 minutes in arrivals, a great big man mountain strode out of the exit from customs with a big thick coat on trailing his suitcase. He had a well trimmed short beard, dark hair and rectangular glasses – just like the most recent photo I had of him. Just to confirm he was from Brazil, he had a sticker of the football team Grêmio on the side of his suitcase.