Page 10 of From Now On

He sits bolt upright, his stomach churning with both the fizzy elderflower they had drunk and a creeping sense of fear.

Nothing good ever comes from a 5 a.m. visitor.

The banging comes again and again and he rushes to answer the door before it wakes Nina and Duke, flicking on the hall light as he runs. A rush of cold air blasts into his face as he blinks in the brightness. In front of him are two men. He steps backwards away from their uniforms, their sombre expressions. It is the second time he’s been faced with the police and after that first time his life had changed immeasurably as he knows it will again now.

After tonight, nothing will ever be the same.

He shakes his head.

Don’t tell me.

‘Mr Johnson?’

‘Walker.’ Charlie had never changed his surname when his mum had married Bo.

‘Can we come in?’

Don’t tell me.

Charlie’s legs shake as he leads them into the lounge. Sasha is pulling on a jumper. Before he can cross to her side Nina and Duke pound down the stairs. They run to Charlie and he offers them each a hand, and their smaller fingers squeeze around his.

United as siblings for perhaps the first time ever.

Don’t tell me.

‘Veronica and William Johnson are your parents?’

‘Ronnie and Bo.’ Charlie never understood how Bo came from William. He had asked him once but he can’t remember the answer. He does remember, though, that Bo had once told him if he were to pick a stage name it would have been Woody. Woody Shaw. But Bo… This isn’t the thing that his racing thoughts should be focusing on,but it is, somehow believing that if he can solve the puzzle of the name before the officer speaks again Bo might appear. His mum might magically materialise.

Don’t tell me.

‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’

Chapter Four

Nina

It is the sharp wind whipping against Nina’s face that causes her eyes to stream. It isn’t tears. She cannot cry.

Her parents are dead.

She doesn’t believe it. She won’t believe it.

Once she’d spent a holiday here in Colesby Bay. She remembers the vibrancy, the colour. Staking their claim on the crowded beach, spreading a tartan picnic rug and laying out the thick sandwiches they had made together in their caravan. Dad shelling eggs, Duke mashing them with a fork, Nina mixing in the mayo while Mum buttered fresh white bread. Later, Mum had been starfished on an orange towel soaking up the sun while her dad shrieked with mock fear as Nina and Duke advanced towards him, freezing sea water sloshing out of red plastic buckets.

Now it’s bleak, almost deserted.

They always said they’d return but it was such a long journey and Duke got carsick, and instead they’d spent the last few years alternating between Cleethorpes or Mablethorpe.

Now she is back and it’s the last place on earth she wants to be.

Again, her eyes scan the ocean as she wills her parents to appear.How could they have gone out on a boat at midnight to watch the fireworks? It’s ridiculous, all the things her parents told her that she should not, that she could not do, and then they go and throw away their own rule book and… In her head she can hear her mum humming ‘All The Things You Are’ and she shakes the sound away. It turns out that all the things her parents are, were reckless, stupid, selfish.

Dead.

She won’t accept it until their bodies are found. The coastguard here, Alan, has repeated the same things as the police had when they’d stood uncomfortably in her house early this morning.

The tide and the weather pattern had swept her parents out to sea when the rickety rowing boat they had foolishly gone out in to watch the midnight fireworks had capsized. Bodies –bodies– aren’t always washed up but this is unpredictable; there is no way of knowing. What they did know with certainty was that the temperature of the freezing air and frigid water would have killed her parents along with the bass player and keyboard player of the band – Hal and Fingers – who had been with them. It would have been quick, they were told, as though that was some comfort. It was only Marty, the drummer who had cancer, who had survived. The one who had chosen to stay on the beach.

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