Page 42 of From Now On

Duke

Duke can’t sleep. He can’t stop thinking about Charlie in New York. He said he’d text Duke when he got there but Aunt Violet makes him and Nina put their handsets in the kitchen drawer each night before bed so he can’t check. It’s a stupid rule.

‘What if there’s a fire and I need to call nine-nine-nine?’ he had asked Violet.

‘The smoke alarm will make a noise and wake me and I’ll call them.’

‘What if there’s a bomb in my room and I need to call the army?’

‘Who would leave a bomb in your room? Now you’re just being silly.’

Jayden might want to blow him up, Duke had thought, but Aunt Violet didn’t want to listen to him anymore. Not like Mum, who at least used to let him get his worries out of his head before dismissing them. It’s one of the things he hates about living here. He makes a list of the others.

Billie isn’t here

Going to school

Meat on his plate every dinnertime

When he flushes the toilet,the water is green

He hears Nina creep out of her room and downstairs. He wonders what she is doing. Whether she’s sneaking out again the way she had when they lived at home.

He wonders where she went then. What she’s doing now.

Chapter Nineteen

Nina

Nina scurries back to bed, clutching her phone to her chest. She’ll put it back in the kitchen drawer before Aunt Violet checks tomorrow.

There’s no text from Charlie but she doesn’t care. He abandoned her before and he has again, so what?

Everybody leaves her.

But however flippant she tries to be, she cannot calm the throb of loneliness she feels.

Charlie left her to be with Sasha.

Her parents left her and Duke behind on New Year’s Eve to be together.

She has no one.

What if she did?

She compiles a text:

I love you

Her feelings laid out before her in black and white. Should she send it? She runs her thumb over the letters before deleting them. A rejection would sever the last strand of hope she clings on to that there is somebody, somewhere, who will love her.

Who won’t leave her.

She opens a webpage.

How can you tell if someone fancies you?

She reads the responses becoming more disheartened.

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