Page 13 of From Now On

They traipse inside. In the lounge, the lights on the Christmas tree twinkle. A breeze from Pippa closing the front door causes a card to sway on the mantlepiece before it flutters to the floor. Charlie picks it up. On the front a fat robin on pure white snow;inside it wishes ‘Ronnie, Bo, Nina and Duke a Very Merry Christmas’. There is no mention of him. Rationally he knows this is because he is an adult living away from home but he is not feeling rational. He snaps the rest of the cards down; this family of four is now a family of two, or are they a three? Charlie doesn’t know where he fits. Where any of them belong now. Their world has changed forever.

‘Charlie—’ Pippa lightly touches his arm ‘—what do you want to do?’

His head throbs as he thinks about funerals and childcare and all of the things he doesn’t feel equipped for but then Pippa adds, ‘The children are tired but they haven’t eaten since the chips and they only picked at those,’ and he realizes she is asking about now, not the future, which stretches out undefined and uncertain.

Duke and Nina are in the hallway. Still wearing their coats, still wearing their shoes, the way he had yesterday. They are now the strangers in their own home, awaiting instructions.

He crouches and unzips Duke’s yellow anorak, eases his arms from the sleeves. He unlaces his brother’s trainers and tugs them off before lining them up on the shoe rack next to matching tartan slippers that his parents will never wear again.

Nina pulls off her own things before moping into the kitchen, clicking on the light and staring around as though she has never seen it before.

Charlie gathers the pizza boxes that are strewn across the worktops; they need to go in the outside bin. It’s unfathomable that just twenty-four hours ago they had been playing games.

Laughing.

Had they been laughing when his parents had slipped under the icy surface of the brutal sea?Had they made jokes as salt water had filled their lungs?

‘Charlie?’ Pippa gently takes the boxes from him. He has gripped them so tightly in his hand that his thumb has punctured the cardboard.

‘Right.’ He turns to Nina and Duke. ‘Shall I make some food?’

‘Food?’ Nina glares at him as though it is all his fault. She turns and storms upstairs. He hears her thundering footsteps and then the creak of springs as she hurls herself onto her bed.

‘Duke?’ Charlie asks.

‘I’m tired.’

‘Let’s get you upstairs then.’

Charlie leads his brother up to his room. Helps him into his pyjamas. Tucks him under the duvet. Duke hasn’t cleaned his teeth but Charlie thinks that’s the least of his worries.

‘What’s going to happen now?’ Duke whispers.

‘I’ll read you a story,’ Charlie says, deliberately misunderstanding.

He scans the bookcase; Duke has the complete set of J. R. R. Tolkien books but they’re too weighty and he doesn’t have the focus. Instead, he settles on Roald Dahl’sCharlie and the Chocolate Factory. There is a comforting familiarity about the story that his mother used to read to him that momentarily eases the ache in Charlie’s chest. His eyes flicker between the pages and Duke’s face, noticing the way his mouth lolls open when he finally falls asleep.

In the hallway, Charlie closes the door gently behind him. He can hear anguished weeping coming from behind Nina’s door. She hasn’t cried all day and now it seems that she cannot stop. Charlie raises his hand to knock but then lets it fall to his side. What can he possibly say to make this any better?

Still, he doesn’t feel he can leave her so he sits on the carpet, his spine hard against the wall waiting until her sobs grow quieter until, finally, they stop altogether. She has cried herself to sleep and her silence is a huge and shameful relief for Charlie who pulls himself to his feet and trudges downstairs. Pippa is sitting at the table, a plate of crumbs and discarded crusts in front of her.

‘I made myself a sandwich. Didn’t know how long you would be. I’ve fed Billie too. Drink?’

‘Please.’

Pippa automatically makes him a tea while his taste buds scream for a whisky, vodka, oblivion. But he cannot drink, empty stomach or otherwise. He feels the pinch of guilt for even thinking about eating but the gnawing hunger in his stomach is making him feel sick. He makes toast, spreading it thickly with butter, thinly with Marmite, but every bite feels tasteless and terrible in his mouth.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Pippa asks when he pushes his empty plate away.

‘Yes. No.’ Charlie links his hands behind his head and stares up at the ceiling.

What is he going to do?

‘I’ll help. Any way I can. I’m here for you.’

‘I can’t ask that of you. I wasn’t there for you. Your grandma. I’m sorry.’ Charlie doesn’t offer an excuse; there aren’t any. Pippa is his oldest friend; there was a time she was his only friend, and missing the funeral was reprehensible. He doesn’t always reply to texts from Mum or listen to his voicemails, instead placing messages into the box marked ‘home’ he keeps in the furthest corners of his mind and firmly closing the lid. Now that he is here the box is wide open once more. Is there ever any escape from the past?

‘It’s okay. She was eighty-six.’

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