Page 17 of From Now On

‘Thank you,’ she whispers. But it’s too little. Too late. The pain of regret builds. She trails her fingers down her arms before digging her nails in hard, dislodging the scabs that had formed yesterday, but the release doesn’t last as long as it had the day before and so she presses her face against her mum’s pillow and breathes in the smell of her; not perfume and not shampoo, just… Mum.

‘I’m so sorry.’ She begins to cry. She is sorry for it all, for not telling her parents how much she loved them. How much she appreciated them. Most of all, she is sorry she never said goodbye. It is a long time before her body stops shaking, both the rabbit and the pillowcase drenched with her tears.

Eventually she sits up, rubs her sore eyes. Slowly she drinks it all in. The make-up spread across Mum’s dressing table. She only ever wore it on special occasions.

A birthday.

A party.

A drunken midnight boat trip.

In front of the mirror, Nina twists the lipstick and coats her mouth with the almost imperceptible nude. Mum had made such an effort – had Dad told her that she looked beautiful? Probably; he adored her. Why hadn’t Nina told her mum she had looked nice instead of flapping her away with still-wet nails, as though she was nothing? She runs her finger over the bronze eyeshadow with the gold flecks and tries to imagine it on her mum. There is a brief, horrible moment when she can’t quite recall the colour of Mum’s eyes before she remembers they were the exact shade of Cadbury’s milk chocolate. She sinks onto the stool, her heart beating furiously. Realizing that sometime in the future, not today, but sometime, the nuances that make up her parents will fade from her mind. The sound of their laughs. The tone of their voices. It will all gradually slip away until all she is left with is a 2D image, a flat snapshot in her mind of the people they once were.

Her dad’s clothes are heaped on a chair in the corner – and he told her to be tidy. She picks up his navy cable-knit jumper and slips it over her head, feeling the scratch of wool against the cuts on her arms. The sleeves hang down over her hands.

On the back of the bedroom door are matching dressing gowns, white and towelling.

Everything is just as they left it as though at any moment they could come back. Nina feels uncomfortable. Intrusive. She pulls open her mum’s bedside cabinet drawer and half-heartedly rummages through it for an address book.She is almost certain her mum won’t have one. Her world was made up of this house, this family. Her heart and head always full of Dad, no room for anyone else. She slides the door shut. She doesn’t want to do this. She doesn’t want to inadvertently uncover anything personal that might make her think about her mum any differently.

Nina’s mind turns to morbid thoughts. What if she has an accident? Who would go through her room?

Nina has secrets of her own.

Things she wants to keep hidden.

Chapter Seven

Duke

Duke wakes, his legs sticky, pyjamas and sheet soaked.

He hasn’t wet the bed in years and he doesn’t know what to do. Who to tell? His parents aren’t here anymore and that is because of him, he thinks. His fault. Nina calls him weird sometimes and she is right. He still hasn’t cried – not because he doesn’t feel sad but because the sadness is stuck somewhere and it won’t come out. Not out of his mouth anyway.

He begins to peel his pyjamas off. Nina hasn’t stopped crying. He hears her now, through the wall, and he knows he can’t ask her how to work the washing machine. He’s too embarrassed to ask Charlie.

Duke dresses. His skin itches as it dries. He should probably have a bath – he hasn’t had one since the day before New Year’s Eve and that’s four days ago now but nobody has told him to have one.

He bundles his sheets and pyjamas in his arms and creeps out onto the landing. Downstairs he stuffs everything into the machine and then he puts the green balls in that Mum uses that are supposed to get your clothes clean but don’t always. He jabs at the buttons,watching the numbers on the display jump from thirty, to forty, to fifty, wondering what they mean.

‘Hey.’ Pippa touches his shoulder. He spins around, feeling his face glow hot. He hadn’t heard her come in but then she’s here pretty much all of the time at the moment. ‘What are you washing?’

He can’t think of a suitable lie. ‘My sheets,’ he mumbles.

‘Did you have an accident?’ she asks. Duke wonders how one word can mean so many different consequences: wet sheets; a capsized boat. He nods.

‘I won’t tell anyone. I promise,’ she says but how can Duke trust her? On New Year’s Eve when they had made cookies and he began to eat the dough Nina had said, ‘It’s got raw eggs in it. You’ll probably die if you eat that.’

Pippa had promised him, ‘Nobody’s going to die,’ but they did, didn’t they?

‘If they do it’s your fault now,’ Nina had said and so he must be to blame, mustn’t he? If he hadn’t been a greedy pig and eaten that dough, then Mum and Dad might still be here? Mum always talked a lot about karma and fate. He isn’t quite sure how it works but she had always said the universe listened to everything.

‘Duke, why don’t you go and have a shower and I’ll see if there’s any more laundry and make your bed?’

‘And wash my hair?’ he asks.

‘And wash your hair.’ She ruffles it.

Showers aren’t fun, not like baths, and it doesn’t take Duke long. In his room he dresses before heading downstairs. The kitchen is empty, the lounge too.

---