Page 89 of From Now On

He presses his ear against the door.

He can’t hear anything except the frantic beating of his own uneasy heart.

‘Nina?’ He knocks again, louder this time, thinking that perhaps she is still asleep.

Charlie chews his thumbnail, wondering what to do.

Part of him feels if Nina is acting like a child she should be treated like one and shouldn’t get a say in his private life but he remembers how hateful the world can feel when you’re a teenager and he wants Nina to feel he is on her side.

His knuckles rap once more before he pushes the handle down and steps inside the room.

For a second he’s taken aback. The room is exactly as he’d left it yesterday evening. Bed made. Tidy. For a second he wonders if Nina was up early, slipped out before he woke, but she’s never bothered to straighten her duvet before.

Something isn’t right.

He scans the room, noticing the pile of schoolbooks on the floor where he had left her rucksack yesterday after he had taken her PE kit to wash. Where’s her rucksack?

He feels hot. It feels horribly intrusive to rummage through her drawers but he does it anyway. He thinks there are a couple of pairs of jeans and some tops missing.

She’s run away.

Charlie is overcome with a helplessness so fierce it saps the strength from his legs. He sinks onto her bed.

She’s run away.

Is he that terrible to live with? That unbearable? Is this all because of the earring?

He calls up her number on his mobile. The photo of him at eighteen holding his brand-new baby sister lights up. She doesn’t answer.

‘Nina, call me immediately,’ he garbles onto her answer service. ‘You’re not in trouble, I promise.’ Even as he says this, he recalls the expression on her face when she found the earring in his bed and he knows that, to her, his promises are empty. Easily broken.

‘Duke!’ He runs out onto the landing. Bursts into his brother’s room. Duke sits up and clutches his covers to his chest. His sleepy eyes widen as a look of fear clouds his face.

‘What’s wrong?’ Immediately he thinks the worst.

Charlie tries to smile, not wanting Duke to panic. Not wanting to bring back memories of the last time Duke was wrenched from sleep because this is not like when his parents were missing.

His parents were dead.

Nina is fine; she has to be.

Anxiety rattles against Charlie’s ribs and he places a palm over his chest and draws in a deep breath.

‘When was the last time you saw Nina?’ Charlie asks

‘Yesterday when she came storming out of your bedroom. Why?’

‘I’m just not sure where she is.’

‘If she isn’t here, she’ll be at Maeve’s.’

Relief washes over Charlie. ‘Of course she will be. I’m going to get her. Get dressed. I’ll meet you in the car, hurry up.’

Charlie parks outside Maeve’s house. There is no one framed in the window. Sean’s arms aren’t around Nina the way they were at the memorial, not that he can see anyway. He tells himself he’s being ridiculous. Nina has a crush, that’s all. It’s apparent from the way she’s scrawled Nina Kelly over and over, practising her signature in case Sean ever marries her. It’s a childish fantasy. She hasn’t come here to be with him.

She’s come here to get away from Charlie.

‘Stay here,’ he tells Duke. If Nina causes a scene, which he fully expects her to do, he doesn’t want Duke to be caught in the middle.

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