Page 40 of From Now On

‘It’s not the right time to go over the past, Charlie,’ she says sharply.

‘But…’ He takes a breath. He doesn’t know what she needs because he doesn’t know her anymore. ‘I’d like to be friends again. Get to know you. What you’ve been doing. What your plans are for the future?’

Pippa takes the towel from her head and her damp hair falls around her shoulders. It smells of the strawberry laces they used to eat as kids.

‘I don’t really know what I’m going to do. Grandma left the house to me and Mum – you know my parents lives in Scotland now? Now Dad’s out of the army he wanted to settle near his parents.’

Charlie shakes his head. He used to know everything about Pippa and now he knows nothing. ‘I’m not even really sure how you ended up living here again?’

‘I only stayed in Birmingham after uni because… because of Rick really.’

Rick.

Charlie remembers how he had felt when Mum had told him that Pippa had fallen in love, was living with someone.

‘How do you feel about that?’ Mum had asked.

‘Fine,’ he had replied but the truth was the thought of Pippa being somewhere else, with someone else, had made him feel sick, which was ridiculous and unfair because he had left first. He’d told himself it was because she’d been his best friend since he was five that he worried about her, never admitting, not even to himself that, perhaps, it was more than that.

‘So, you and Rick…’

‘He wasn’t right for me.’

‘But he treated you okay?’

‘Like a princess.’

Charlie feels his fingers curl into fists and he forces himself to straighten them again.

‘But I don’t believe in fairy tales, happily ever afters. Do you?’ Her light blue eyes hold his along with an unspoken question.

‘Ninety-nine per cent of the manuscripts writers submit to me end with happily ever after; it’s what everyone wants, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but my story isn’t finished yet and I’m ready for the next chapter.I came back here because Grandma needed me, but now? I don’t know. You seem to have this clear path all mapped out but—’

‘I really don’t. I still feel about twelve on the inside.’

‘Glad you don’t look it on the outside. It wasn’t your finest age. All that hair!’

‘What was my finest age then?’

‘You’re not looking too shabby right now.’

Is she flirting with him? Is he flirting with her?

What is he doing?

‘I think we’re all just making it up as we go along,’ she says. ‘I once thought adults had it all figured out, but we don’t, do we?’

‘I certainly don’t.’ He is overcome with a feeling of helplessness. ‘Pippa, I really don’t know what to do.’ He can’t untangle whether he’s referring to the house, the kids, Sasha, New York… It’s such a lot.

Too much.

Tears trickle down his cheeks, but he makes no move to brush them away. He has never felt so confused.

‘Charlie.’ Pippa moves to sit next to him on the sofa. Her hand reaches across his lap and she pats Billie’s head, before her fingers find his. He grips them tightly. ‘Remember what my grandma used to say?’

‘You are capable of more than you think.’ He can almost hear her, smell the lavender talcum powder she used to sprinkle over herself, the sofa, the carpet, to try and eradicate the bad smell that Buttercup, the Jack Russell she used to have, would leave behind.

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