Page 27 of From Now On

He tries to tune into the conversation buzzing around him, focus on the faces, but all he can see is Duke forlornly clutching his handset programmed only with three numbers, waiting for a reply that will never come.

They aren’t his problem.

So why does it feel like they are?

Sasha is asleep. Charlie stands among the packing boxes in the flat, which next week will likely have new tenants. It never gets properly dark in London, not like the blackness in Derbyshire, which is absolute. Charlie rests his forehead against the window as he watches the steady stream of headlights pass beneath him.The bright blue ‘Kebab’ sign opposite competing against the neon red ‘Cocktail’ that flashes from the bar next door.

He will miss this.

They call New York the city that never sleeps but it’s possible to still be awake without the noise and the people and the hustle and the bustle. He knows this because Nina frequently messages him at 3 a.m.

She hates the new house.

She hates Aunt Violet.

She hates him.

He doesn’t reply. He tells himself it’s because he thinks Aunt Violet is right. The children need time to settle but really it’s because he is ashamed and, worse still, he thinks that if his mum was here she’d also be ashamed of him but then hasn’t she been ashamed of him for years?

Charlie runs his fingertips lightly over the scars on his wrist.

He still has the box of fudge he bought from Colesby Bay on New Year’s Day. He eats a piece, feeling the sweetness dissolve on his tongue.

He remembers when his mum gave birth to Nina. Her exhaustion. The way he’d watched his sister to give her a break. He’d helped with the relentless stream of nappies, sterilising bottles, warming formula. His conflicted emotions. The love he’d felt as he’d gazed at his new sister tempered with a feeling of envy that she had two solid parents who loved her, that, for her, his mum had chosen a better father than she had for him. The way Nina had splashed him as he’d bathed her, the smell of talcum powder after he’d dried her. The resentment he’d felt when Mum had scooped her up, cradling Nina protectively to her chest, covering her damp,newly washed hair with kisses. At the time he’d run his fingers over his scars on his wrist and wonder if she loved him that much, why she hadn’t protected him. He’d tried to lock that love away, forget his family existed most of the time but now they occupy every waking thought. He recalls leaning over Nina’s cot as she’d wrap tiny fingers tightly around his thumb and he’d whispered that he’d be the best big brother ever.

He had tried but, as she’d grown, he’d felt more and more set apart. She called Bo ‘Dad’ when Charlie never had. She had a different surname. Bo doted on her. Charlie told himself he treated Nina so tenderly because she was a girl. A daughter. He didn’t compare them and find Charlie lacking. By the time Duke was born, Charlie had left home, and when he came to visit, that was what he felt like: a visitor. Bo had a son now, arealson. Bo didn’t treat Charlie any differently but, with Duke, there was a softness in his eyes; he cradled him as though he was gold. Each time Charlie left to return to London, they all stood on the step, waving him goodbye until they stepped back inside, a family, and he was left, catching the train. Alone.

With the passing of time, Charlie can now see that perhaps the gentleness he saw in Bo was because Nina and Duke were babies, not because they were biologically his. That if Bo had been around when Charlie was small perhaps he too would have been swept into Bo’s arms. Showered with kisses.

He thinks perhaps he has got so much wrong.

Too much to put right?

He switches his phone back on. Immediately it buzzes. It isn’t Nina but Pippa. Charlie had messaged her earlier to ask how Billie is and her one word reply tells him ‘fine’.

She is disappointed in him too. They have had one brief, curt conversation since he returned to London where she told him that she can’t keep Billie long-term.

‘Can’t or won’t?’ Charlie had asked, his tone defensive.

‘It’s not just you that has life plans.’ She was equally tetchy.

Long after their conversation had ended, Charlie had wondered what Pippa’s plans are. He hadn’t asked her anything about herself. She must still be devastated over the loss of her grandmother who had raised her but he had been too wrapped up in his own problems to ask her about her own. She had been there for him. She had been there for himagainand he had let her down.

He has so many people to say sorry to he doesn’t know where to start.

The sun is beginning to rise. The sky smudged with pink and orange.

Sasha slips her arms around his waist, nuzzles her chin against his shoulder.

‘You’re up early.’ She kisses the back of his neck.

He turns to face her, his lips finding hers. His hands slip under her camisole top. She pulls back. ‘I’ve a breakfast meeting.’

She showers and dresses, leaving before he does. He’s sorting his bookcase into two piles, one for the charity shop and one to put in storage, when the post drops onto his mat. He rifles through the envelopes, junk, junk, and then something else.

Something official.

He has to read it twice to make sense of it. Have Duke and Nina received one too? They must have…

---