Page 66 of From Now On

Nina Kelly

Nina Kelly

He knew what this was; he’d been at school once. It was a girl practising her future signature. Her married signature.

Kelly isn’t a unique name but the only one he knows is Maeve’s dad, Sean.

He thinks back to the picnic.

The way Sean held Nina in his arms, her cheek resting against his neck. The seconds that slid by before he let her go.Is there something going on between them? Anger flares in his stomach. Sean is far too old for his sister; even if he were younger, Nina’s age, Charlie knew it wouldn’t matter. He would have a problem with anyone laying his hands on her. Even if there’s nothing going on and it’s all in her head she obviously has feelings for him, thinking… what? Sean might marry her?

It is stupid and childish and that makes Charlie think at best Nina is solely harbouring a crush; at worst she had been standing in the arms of a… a paedophile, right in front of him too.

He doesn’t hear Nina come back in the room. It isn’t until she snatches the paper from his fingers and screws it into a ball that he registers she is there, mouth twisted in fury.

‘What the fuck, Nina?’ Charlie doesn’t follow the advice from the parenting books. He knows his face is showing anger and frustration and he doesn’t care.

‘It’s nothing.’ Her cheeks are blazing; her eyes too.

‘It isn’t nothing. Sean Kelly! If he’s touched you—’

‘He hasn’t,’ she snaps. ‘And so what if he has? At least hecaresabout me.’

‘Cares?’

‘He listens to me. Asks me how I feel.’

‘I’m always asking you how you bloody feel.’

‘Yeah, but do you really want to hear the answers?’

‘He’s a grown man.’

‘And I’m not a child. Get out my room, Charlie.’

‘You can’t talk to me like that.’

‘I can talk to you however I like. You’re not my dad. Is this how your dad treated you? Or is this how you treated him? Is that why he left you?’

Charlie feels his hand twitch but he doesn’t raise it. They glare at each other.

He takes a deep breath. ‘Fine then. I’ll go and ask Sean what he thinks—’

‘No. Please, don’t Charlie.’ Nina doesn’t apologise but she no longer shouts. ‘It isn’t… I just… Look, I can promise you there is nothing going on between me and Sean.’

‘I…’ he trails off. If there’s a chapter in the parenting book covering this then he hasn’t yet read it. ‘Okay. I believe you.’ She sounds so sincere. ‘Look, I was going to ask if you wanted to go out for food? Duke’s eating at Evie’s. It would be nice for the two of us to spend some time together?’

‘Another time? It’s been a long day and I’m not hungry. Why don’t you go somewhere, Charlie? I’ll wait here for Duke. You haven’t had a night out since you moved here.’

He doesn’t want to go anywhere on his own but she is trying to make amends so he says yes and slips out of the room with the olive branch, his shame and the sordid conclusions he had jumped to.

Charlie has caught a bus into town and walks into the nearest bar. He’s been here before when he was sixteen, with Pippa, because they had a reputation for never checking IDs. Then it was a spit and sawdust pub. All dark beams and sticky floors and live music at weekends. Now it’s a Wetherspoons but whether through nostalgia or because he can’t be bothered to find anywhere better, Charlie orders a Guinness and while the barman is waiting for it to settle, he asks for a whisky chaser. Alcohol hasn’t passed his lips for years – and for good reason – but he downs it in one, feeling the burn in his throat, the warmth in his stomach. He sips his pint,licking the froth from his lips before he glances around, wondering if there’s anyone here he went to school with, but he doesn’t recognize anyone. Even the music is new to him.

He’s making a mess of everything.

Should he talk to Sean and ask him outright if anything is going on? He wants to believe Nina but he can’t scrub the image of Sean’s arms around her from his mind. Mum would know how to handle this but then if Mum and Dad were still here Nina wouldn’t be searching for a father figure.

He wishes Pippa were here. She’d know what to do. She seems to know everything, from sprinkling baking soda over the rug to neutralise the smell of Billie to rubbing the chopping boards with half a lemon to remove the stains.

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