Page 81 of From Now On

‘I’m watching YouTube.’

‘You’re always watching YouTube.’

‘You’re always annoying.’

‘Annoying. Jinx.’ Duke said ‘annoying’ at the same time as Nina so now she can’t speak.

She shrugs and heads upstairs.

‘Come back,’ he calls. ‘I’ll release you from the jinx,’ but she’s gone.

‘Charlie, you have to—’

‘Duke, breathe. Everything will be okay.’

‘But I don’t know any tricks and magicians have to haveflairand I don’t think I have anyflairand—’

‘Calm down, Duke. We’ll think of something else then.’

And then they did, and it was brilliant.

Absolutely bloody brilliant.

Chapter Forty

Charlie

‘Yes. You can laugh,’ Charlie says to Billie as he constructs and then abandons another paragraph in his novel. She is watching him intently, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.

He is exhausted. Yesterday, when Duke had come up with the idea of choreographing a routine for the talent show with Billie they had both thought it was brilliant.

It really wasn’t.

Billie might be trained to sit and stay but, despite hours of practice, they couldn’t get her to roll over, high-five, or anything else.

‘I think she’s too clever?’ Duke had said.

‘Clever?’

‘Yeah. She knows that when she’s learned it, she’ll stop getting treats for trying.’

In the end they had stopped trying.

Decided that perhaps magic was the thing after all. Charlie had texted Pippa once Duke had gone to bed:sorry it got rather hectic and you didn’t get a chance to speak to the kids to tell them you’re moving.

I’ll talk to the kids before I go.

He sends another message,Can we talk?

She hadn’t replied.

Today he has messaged her again, and again. Knocked on her door, called her name despairingly through her letterbox not sure what he wants to say but knowing he has to saysomething.

Eventually his phone trembles a message.

Give me some space, Charlie. I need to learn to be without you.

It is another punch in the gut. Charlie wants to reply that she’s just had space in Scotland, but he respects her and wants her to be happy so switches his phone off before he can say anything to make it worse, although how much worse it can get he does not know.

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