Page 85 of From Now On

‘In a bit. I’ve got homework to do first.’

‘Yes, of course.’

She takes the stairs two at a time before he can call her back. She guesses he’s been reading that bloody parenting book again. Whatever.

His newfound words of wisdom can wait.

She hasn’t got homework at all but there is something she can’t stop watching. Something she can’t get out of her mind.

She thinks she has found her dad.

Before she has even settled herself on the bed, she has opened her laptop. Is replaying the YouTube video for the millionth time trying to make sense of the grainy images.

Is it her dad?

It has been torturous keeping this to herself but she hasn’t confided in anyone.Charlie and Duke have been obsessed with the stupid magic act and although she normally shares everything with Maeve, she hasn’t been able to share this. Not wanting Maeve to look at her with sympathy, shatter her hopes because it seems preposterous to think that her dad has survived the cold and choppy sea and chosen not to come home and yet…

She studies the footage again on her laptop, it is impossible to tell.

In front of the camera the small girl with the bouncing pigtails thrusts out a cornet speared with a flake. ‘I scream—’ the person recording shakes with laughter ‘—ice cream.’

‘I scream,’ the child insists, emphasizing each word before letting out an ear-piercing shriek.

‘Shut-up-shut up-shut-up,’ Nina mutters as though she might silence the toddler, might be able to hear the busker who is almost out of shot.

She plays it again and again, hoping that this time it will be different but the bloody child is still bloody screaming.

Nina slams the laptop lid shut. Unbidden, her nails begin to rake at her skin and so seconds later she opens the YouTube app on her mobile to occupy her fingers.

She can’t clearly see the man in the background strumming his guitar, can’t hear him playing, but there’s something in his stance, something so familiar it makes her heart ache.

A headache is forming behind her eyes.

Is it possible her dad survived but has forgotten who he is? She googles amnesia and reads that the most common cause are head injuries, alcohol and traumatic events. Could her dad have hit his head on a rock when the boat capsized? He had the alcohol and the traumatic event in the bag.

Nina’s longing that her dad might be alive is tightly bound in strands of logic that he can’t be. Nevertheless, she tries to unpick her hope, but it’s all tangled together and she just can’t do it alone. She cannot bear the weight of this any longer.

She uncrosses her legs and stamps out her pins and needles before heading to find Charlie. He wanted to talk to her about something anyway.

She hears the shower running, decides to wait in his room – Mum and Dad’s room – for him.

There was a time she would have hurled herself into their bed for Sunday morning cuddles with them. Rushing in with her stocking when she’d woken in the early hours to find that Father Christmas had been. Reading intently from her favourite storybooks while Mum breastfed Duke who was forever hungry. Now she slowly lowers herself onto the edge of the mattress and glances around the room.

The mustard-yellow chair by the window is heaped with Charlie’s clothes, the wardrobe still full of her mum’s dresses, her dad’s shirts. Make-up and jewellery on the dressing table have been pushed to one side, bottles of Charlie’s aftershave and his hairbrush stand among handfuls of loose change. Nothing has been removed as far as Nina can tell. It’s as though her parents could step back into their lives at any given moment and Nina thinks how hard this must be for Charlie. Mum’s dressing gown on the back of the door being the first thing he sees when he wakes, the last thing before he closes his eyes.

He cares.

He could have packed her parents’ belongings away, donated them to charity, but instead he surrounds himself with them. She doesn’t know how he can bear it. It’s hard enough downstairs with her dad’s carved wooden figures and her mum’s vinyl records. At least she has her own room,her own sanctuary. Charlie sleeps in the place they last slept.

Nina runs a hand across the pillow where Mum had once rested her head. She feels something hard underneath her palm.

An earring.

Nina holds it to the light, the silver glinting in her fingertips.

Charlie has had a woman here, in this bed – her mum’s bed, but when?

Nina remembers these sheets hanging on the washing line, not the way Mum would peg them so that they didn’t crease in the middle or drape on the grass, but bunched up too closely, not enough air around them for them to dry properly. Nina remembers telling Charlie he had hung them wrong; was it only yesterday? Yes, she’s certain it was. Whoever has been in this bed, who’s left this earring, did it today.

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