Page 78 of From Now On

Today the words aren’t flowing. He’s exhausted. His sleep broken, dreams full of Pippa. He leans back on his chair, yawning as he gazes out the window. Heart stuttering as he sees Pippa walking up the path. He rubs his eyes, wondering for a split second whether he has imagined her but Billie is already racing to the door, tail wagging furiously.

‘Hi. Good trip? How were your parents? I saw the photos that—’

‘Charlie.’ Pippa cuts off the nonsense that tumbles from his mouth. ‘Can we go for a walk? I need to speak to you and I don’t want to do it here with the kids due home from school soon.’

Pippa doesn’t tell Charlie what she wants to talk about just yet and he doesn’t ask. Instead, he texts Nina and asks her to walk Duke home today and then they move in synchronicity, heading for Briar’s Hill where they climb to the top and sit on the ground, not flopping down like they used to when they were young, but lowering themselves carefully onto the grass that is patchworked with brown, thirsty patches. May is unseasonably hot. He can’t remember the last time it rained.

Charlie steals a glance at her. The gentle breeze flutters the hair around her face, her eyes fixed on the horizon.

How could he have ever thought he could live without her?

Falling in love with Pippa for the first time had happened so close to the accident at the dingy flat his father had been living in since he had separated from Mum.

Too close.

It anchored Charlie’s feelings for Pippa to that time. Thoughts of his father evoking bittersweet memories of Pippa, thoughts of Pippa bringing back into sharp, painful focus his raw and conflicted emotions, love and lust, grief and guilt.

When he was in hospital following a blood transfusion, weak and confused, Charlie was too immature to fully process and experience his intense feelings – anger and sadness and loss – and so he shut them out. He shut everyone out – his mum, Pippa.

She is here now though and Charlie has no idea what she wants to say.

‘I talked everything through with my parents and I’ve made a decision.’

Charlie’s chest tightens painfully.

‘I’ve handed in my notice at work. I… I’ve accepted the offer on the house.’ She draws up her knees and rests her chin on them.

Charlie quells the panic that rises, mentally calculating in his head how long she might still be here for. He has never bought or sold a property but he has friends who have. With banks and solicitors and mortgages and surveys, the process takes months.

‘I’m leaving as soon as I can, Charlie,’ Pippa says. ‘Once I’ve found a home for everything in the house I’m going back to Scotland until the money comes through and then…’

His mouth is dry; he licks his lips before he asks, ‘And then?’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. You know… you know the way I feel about you and it’s hard, too hard to see you every day. It took me a long time to get over you before. I don’t know if I ever really did and… I know you care, Charlie but… it’s not enough.’

Stay. The word rises from his heart until it’s in his mouth, on his tongue.Stay.

He wants to tell her that she means everything to him, that if she leaves he has no purpose. He wants to apologise for being weak and indecisive but explain that he feels the decision is not his alone to make. He wants to beg her to wait until Nina is ready, Duke.

He wants to say sorry.

He forms the words in his head before he says them but they are all inadequate, inappropriate, mistimed and misjudged.

And can they really make it work when they couldn’t before?

So much has happened between then and now that Charlie isn’t sure either of them knows the way back to the way they were, the people they were, young and in love and full of hope. But she knows him in a way that no one ever has before, and, whereas Sasha only ever had part of him, Pippa loves him as a whole.

What is he going to do?

He needs to make a decision based on facts not feelings. It is still unbearable to recall Nina’s anguished screams when the police officers came to the door on New Year’s Day, he remembers the feel of Duke clinging to his legs. He recalls the utter bewilderment on their faces, their disappointment as he left them with Violet and their relief when he returned. He has seen, little by little, day by day, the frowns disappear from their faces, Nina even smiles occasionally now when she thinks Charlie isn’t looking. But then, in an instant, their expressions can darken as they remember that their parents are never coming home again. He is there at night as they wake from nightmares. He is there to offer comfort and security and reassurance.

The cold, stark truth is that Duke and Nina need him far more than Pippa does. He has to put them first because that’s what being a parent is, isn’t it? Second place. Always. He feels terrible for the pain he has caused Pippa but takes his own needs and locks them away once more. Perhaps in the future he will get them out, dust them off, examine them from all angles, wondering if now is the right place, the right time for him. He has already found the right person.

But he has to let her go.

‘I think…’ Their eyes lock and he sees the hope on her face but he cannot deny her his honesty in the way that he had before. ‘If leaving is the right thing for you then you should.’ The confusion on Pippa’s face clears as she understands what Charlie isn’t saying – that he can’t be with her – and instead, her face falls into an expression of immeasurable sadness. She wrings her hands in her lap. His chest hurts and it feels as if she is holding his heart, squeezing it in her fingers, her grip growing tighter.

He feels the distance between them widen although neither of them has moved. Loneliness ripples through him but hasn’t it always been this way? Keeping everyone at arm’s length? Charlie feels he has always been waiting for the next loss. For someone else to leave him. There’s a justification in his sadness. An ‘I-told-you-so’ woven through his pain. ‘I think…’ Charlie stumbles over his own inadequacy. ‘I think in a different time, a different place, we could have been blissfully happy.’ He speaks tentatively. Carefully placing every word but she looks so utterly hurt, so utterly bewildered, and he knows what he is saying is no consolation but he wants her to understand. If it weren’t for the circumstances, if it weren’t for Nina and Duke then perhaps, but love cannot be enough. It has to have a shape, a future. They sit on top of the hill where they shared their first taste of alcohol, their first and only cigarette and their hopes and dreams with the unacknowledged truth heavy between them.

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