Page 74 of From Now On

‘I’m not. I’m… your son, Dad. Why don’t you care?’ Charlie had been close to tears. ‘Don’t I meananythingto you? Don’t you love me? I love you.’

Their eyes had met and simultaneously there’d been a crack, a shatter. Charlie had leaped forward, his hands stretched out to catch his dad. He’d felt Dad’s foot as it landed hard on his forearm. Felt the tear of his skin as the sole of Dad’s boot drove shards of glass into his skin. He remembers the pain. The way he’d screamed and screamed. The blood. So much blood.He remembers Dad yanking off his T-shirt and pressing it to Charlie’s wrist, the smell of his sweat and beer mingling with the metallic tang of his blood, which was pooling over the shabby beige carpet.

Charlie had thought he was dying and, from the panic in his eyes, Dad had thought so too but still he hadn’t told Charlie that he was sorry. He hadn’t told him that he loved him.

There had been a hammering on the front door and Dad had tried to shush him but Charlie hadn’t been able to stop screaming. When the police had burst in, Dad had run out of the back door.

Charlie, having been taken to hospital, had somehow felt that it was all his fault.

His wrist and arm were stitched but they couldn’t repair the tear to his heart, which widened when Mum told him that Dad had been tracked down and interviewed but wasn’t facing any charges for neglect but, nevertheless, he was moving away; he wouldn’t be leaving a forwarding address.

It was shortly after this that Mum had taken him to Cornwall –to recuperate– and then she had met Bo. Charlie had instantly recognized the love between them and he’d tried to equate that love with the feelings he’d had for Pippa but the one searing thought that pierced his mind again and again was that his love hadn’t been enough for his dad; it hadn’t been enough to stop him drinking, stay at home, get down from the table, and it wouldn’t be enough for Pippa.

He wouldn’t be enough.

Back at school after the summer, everyone had eyed the scars on his wrist and rumours had circulated that Charlie had tried to kill himself and he’d never corrected them because the shame of people thinking he’d tried to take his own life was less than the shame of his father not loving him.

‘I never told Sasha, you know?’ He returns to the present, to Pippa.

‘Any of it?’

‘No. I thought that she should know, if we were to… you know settle down, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.’

‘She wouldn’t have judged you on your father.’

‘Perhaps not on that, but on what came after.’

He hears a sharp inhale from Pippa and he knows she is remembering as he is too. How he began to drink, finding the hidden bottles his dad had left behind at home and downing them, draining the Martini that was Pippa’s grandmother’s and, later, stealing cash so he could buy his own.

‘Please, Charlie,’ Pippa had begged as she’d found him at the top of Briar’s Hill in a pool of his own vomit. ‘I can’t bear to see you like this. I love you.’

‘I don’t love you,’ he’d said although he did. He’d wanted someone else to feel that their love wasn’t enough. He’d wanted to hurt someone the way he was hurting. He’d pushed Pippa away again and again until eventually she’d stopped knocking on his door with that hopeful look in her eyes.

It was Bo who’d intervened after he’d moved in with them. ‘Enough’s enough, lad,’ he had said firmly. ‘You’re killing your mother.’

Charlie had glared at her, blaming her. If she hadn’t driven Dad to drink, if she hadn’t told him to leave.

If.

If.

If.

He convinced himself it wasn’t his fault. Addictions ran in families. Perhaps if he had children of his own they too would be alcoholics.

It was Mum falling pregnant with Nina coupled with the firm but fair pep talks from Bo that had made him realize he had a choice, a future. It had cleaned him up. He was going to be a big brother and it felt like a fresh start.

He avoided Pippa where he could, ashamed at the way he had treated her, wanting to make it up to her but not sure how, knowing she was leaving soon for university. While drawing his bedroom curtains one night, he saw her, illuminated under the orange glow of a lamppost, kissing someone else.

After she left for uni he was bereft, finding joy in Nina but little else until he left for London using his inheritance from his grandparents to rent a room in a house while he worked as an intern in publishing and then he focused on his present, trying to put his past behind him.

For years he has abstained from alcohol to prove to himself that he is nothing like his dad but sometimes he hates himself for feeling he has something to prove. Last night he drank and felt like the man who had let him down and he still hates himself. He can’t win.

‘I missed you when you left.’ Pippa rests her head on Charlie’s shoulder. ‘I still miss you.’

He touches her hair; it still feels like silk. He swallows hard; he has so much he wants to say. She gazes up at him, letting him know with her eyes that he hasn’t left it too late.

He knows if he were to kiss her she would taste of his past and his present and the future he wants.

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