The Moment You Were Gone

by Nicci Gerrard

  One

  ‘How did we meet?’ asked Gaby, smiling into the young face in front of her. ‘Ah, well, it was all a bit dramatic. We met by an accident.’

  ‘By accident?’

  ‘By an accident. I remember it as clearly as if it happened yesterday.’

  Every couple has the story of how they met: they tell it to each other and then they repeat it, with improvised additions and interruptions, to family and friends. Their own story was wild, vivid, streaked through with someone else’s tragedy, and when they told it they would look across at each other and remember the sunken lane and the dark velvet of the night and they would seem to each other and themselves like figures in a Gothic painting. For they did not meet at school or college, or in an office or at a party; not through a friend, an evening class or a dating agency; not on a train or a plane or a beach; not even eyes meeting, breath thickening and the world slowing. They met because of a car crash. Their worlds were entirely separate and would have remained so had it not been for three drunk students driving an old and uninsured Rover too fast round a sharp corner and into the ancient horse-chestnut tree, whose massive trunk was barely marked. The car crumpled on impact like cardboard, folding up on itself in a screech of tearing metal and shattering glass, and someone’s short cry that sounded from a distance like an owl’s shriek. Three people’s stories ended that night – the two passengers’ almost at once, under the boughs of the tree, and the driver’s on the way to hospital, calling for his mates – and their story began.

  Over the years, Gaby had lost track of the difference between their two accounts. Connor’s memories of their meeting came to seem like her own; her memories belonged to him too. It was an uncanny sensation, like a bright and feverish dream in which she saw herself through Connor’s eyes, and felt Connor’s emotions inside her skull. Was this love, she would wonder, when you cannot separate the self from the other? The thought scared her, for she wasn’t sure that she should let herself disappear like that, be so dissolved by intimacy. She sometimes wanted her distinct story back, the one with clear lines and a single point of view. She needed edges or she felt she might fall apart. The night they met, Connor had found her and she – euphorically, unequivocally – had lost herself. As she listened to him tell their story, she felt herself plummet into the past and a kind of vertigo overwhelm her. Was this how it had happened?

  Connor was driving back to Oxford from a visit to his parents, just outside Birmingham. His father, a machine operator and a lifetime smoker, had been diagnosed with lung cancer. His mother, who had always felt that life had let her down, had taken to drinking in the daytime with the ferocity she applied to cleaning the house, banging on the rugs with a broom to scatter dust in the backyard. Connor had been thinking about his parents as he drove: his father had been surprisingly cheery about the diagnosis, almost sprightly, with a malicious gleam in his eye as he took his regular swipes at Connor’s politics and his convict’s blunt-scissored haircut, while his mother seemed more wretchedly fleshless than ever and her eyes had turned a marbled yellow. He could still feel her fingers on his upper arms where she’d gripped him when they’d said goodbye. Although she was only fifty, she had seemed to him like a leering witch out of a fairytale, dragging him back into the stifling, dimly lit hovel of his childhood. ‘Come again soon,’ she’d hissed, cheap red wine and brandy on her breath, and he’d had to make an enormous effort not to pull away in revulsion.

  As he drove, he tried not to think too deeply but, rather, to let fragments and images drift in loose formations across his sore mind. The book he’d been reading about tropical medicine. The words of a song, what was it?, lying in a burnt-out basement, something-something, hoping for – hoping for what? He couldn’t remember; the words flickered across the corner of his memory and, as he tried to catch hold of them, out of sight. The meal he’d had with his parents, shepherd’s pie with tepid potato forked into crests and tinned carrots. His body felt itchy and unclean, his limbs heavy with all the driving. He would go on a run tomorrow morning, before he went to the hospital – he would get up at six thirty, before it was properly light, and run along the canal as the sun rose in the sky. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard and saw that it was past midnight; only a few miles to go and already there was the faint orange luminescence of the city on the skyline. He’d never been in absolute darkness, and perhaps it would scare him but he thought he would like it. He found darkness quite welcoming; it was harsh light he disliked. Bare lightbulbs; deserts; wastes of dazzling snow.

  Sally would probably have gone to bed by now; he pictured her dark hair spread across the pillow and her calm face. Outside his room there was mess, noise, the chaos of a shared household, but inside it was neat. Things were in their proper place. The cupboard doors were shut and his textbooks were stacked on the table where he worked. Sally often stayed over but she was careful not to disturb the order. There would be a tumbler of water on the table beside her, a dial of pills and probably a novel or a medical textbook, its bookmark in place. Her clothes would be folded neatly on the chair by the door. She wore a tiny enigmatic smile while sleeping, but occasionally she opened her eyes so that only the whites would show, and Connor, unnerved, would lightly press his thumbs on the lids to close them again, feeling like an undertaker with a corpse.

  He was finding it hard to stay awake although his journey was nearly over and he only had to last another twenty minutes or so. He knew that he should get out of the car for a few minutes, yet he continued sluggishly to drive. The heating wasn’t working properly, so the air that blew out of the right vent was icy, while the one on the left was too warm. His eyelids were heavy and the road wavered in the glare of his headlights. He strained his pebble-eyes wider and stretched his face in an exaggerated, rubbery grimace, trying to focus. He sat up stiff and straight, then took the last square of milk chocolate that was lying in its wrapper on the seat beside him and sucked it slowly, to make it last. Sweetness dribbled down his throat; for a brief moment he felt alert and the road lay blessedly clear before him. But how strange, when you know that to sleep is to die, that it can be so impossible to stay awake. He chewed his lip, then pinched his cheek for a second, hard enough to cause him pain. He tightened his grip on the steering-wheel. If the radio worked, he could find a station, sing along loudly, but all he could get was an unpleasant hissing crackle, with occasional isolated words bursting through the static. He opened his windows to the sharp slap of autumn air and, although he had sworn to himself he would give up smoking, pressed in the car lighter. When it sprang out again, he lit a cigarette. Its tip glowed red as he sucked on it and his lungs ached. He thought of his father’s scorched lungs, he thought about dying, and still sleep pressed down on him. Somewhere ahead he thought he heard a sound, a thunderclap or the shot of a gun, even, then the shriek of an owl. He rubbed his eyes feverishly as the road lurched and trees tipped giddily towards him.

  A figure burst out of the hedgerow and plunged towards his car. At first – even as he pressed his foot on the brake and swerved violently, tyres screaming, and a toxic burst of adrenaline – he thought it was a shadow, a trick of the darkness and of his fatigue. He couldn’t even tell which direction it was coming from; perhaps it was a large bird flying close overhead. But then the figure resolved itself. He saw that it was shouting, waving its arms as it wove in front of the car, into and out of the glare of his headlights. He saw, then lost again, a white patch of face with a darkly open mouth and holes where eyes must be, a flying stream of hair, a long skirt knotted up.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Fists pounded on his window. He pulled on the handbrake and pushed the door open. She half fell in on him, in a yabber of incomprehensible sounds. He caught the smell of tobacco and perfume, a clatter of beads round her neck.

  ‘Oh-God-help-a-car-bodies-help-I-think-they’re-dead-so-young-ambulance-Jesus …’

  ‘Slow down,’ he said sharply, fully awake now. ‘Tell me what you know.’r />
  ‘Car crash,’ she said, making a visible effort. ‘Just round the corner. They ploughed into a tree. I don’t know if anyone’s alive. The car’s all – it’s mashed up, and I looked in but, oh, Jesus Christ …’ and she came to a juddering halt.

  Gaby herself could not remember what she had said to him. She could not even remember speaking; nor did she have any idea then of whom she was speaking to – man or woman, young or old. All she knew was that she was leaning into a car that smelt of leather, smoke and chocolate, while behind her lay blood and carnage.

  ‘Let me see.’ Connor was out of the car, his legs steady under him; his heartbeat was regular. He felt strangely calm and his voice was authoritative. But everything was happening at a distance. Even as he spoke and acted he was conscious of the figure he cut, the doctor taking charge in a crisis. He felt simultaneously noble yet absurd, a fraud. But the woman in front of him seemed to believe him. She visibly calmed as he spoke.

  Had she? She didn’t remember that, either. But it was true that the man who stood before her possessed an air of authority and she had immediately trusted him to take over. She was no longer alone in the wild night with dead people.

  ‘Show me,’ he said firmly.

  ‘No! Listen! You’ve got to go to someone’s house and call an ambulance. I’ve only got a bike and I think the chain broke when I stopped.’

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ he said – one day he would be, anyway, and saying the words gave him authority, permission to take charge. ‘You should go and call the emergency services, and I’ll stay and see if there’s anything I can do here. Can you drive?’

  ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘I mean – yes. Yes!’

  ‘Take my car, then. Turn round here. There’s a group of houses about three or four miles away.’

  ‘Try to save them.’ She flung herself into the driver’s seat, pulling the door shut on her striped skirt so it fluttered against the sill in a frippery of colour, and reversed up against the bank in a spray of mud. Shot forward, narrowly missing the ditch; wrenched the wheel round again. The engine roared and the wheels spun into a rut, then took hold. The car bucked. She was leaning right forward in the seat, her face almost above the steering-wheel. Connor saw it, her glittering eyes, her Medusa hair, and felt a twinge of alarm. She was driving the car as if she was trying to break in an unruly stallion: one would win and the other lose. Then he turned his back on her and ran along the road the way she had come.

  Now that he was alone, the confidence leaked rapidly away. He dreaded what he would see when he rounded the corner, and he had no idea what he would do.

  ‘So you were scared too?’ Gaby had said, when they first rehearsed their story, picking out details, remembering things that might or might not be true, but that over time became real in their minds. ‘Yes, I was scared,’ he replied. ‘Terrified.’

  In the event, there was little he could do. It was at the darkest time of night and only the light from the half-moon, low in the sky, and the few pinprick stars lit the scene that lay in front of him. He stopped and drew a deep breath, feeling sweat clammy on his forehead. The car, wrapped round the tree, was barely recognizable. Its entire front was crushed in on itself, and it was impossible to believe that someone might be alive in there. He had to check, though: he couldn’t just stand and look on like a useless spectator. He forced himself forward a few steps, peering at the wreckage through squinting, unwilling eyes. He could see a hand dangling limply out of the back window like a motionless wave for help, but otherwise he could not make out anything. The car had closed up on its occupants like a tin can stamped on by a hobnail boot.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, as he reached it. He was glad to hear his voice come out firm and calm. ‘Can anyone hear me in there? The ambulance is on its way. Soon, very soon.’

  The silence all around him was thick, terrible, and he held his own breath so as not to break it. Nothing. Just the rustle and scrape of a leaf as it fell from the tree above him.

  ‘I’m here to help,’ he said, and tried to wrench open the dented back door. It didn’t budge. He picked up the dangling hand and felt for a pulse while trying to make out the body it was attached to, somewhere inside the carnage of the car. He could smell blood, metallic and sweet, and shit: it caught in his nostrils. Was this the smell of death? He’d cut up corpses in his first year, but they’d reeked of formaldehyde. Pickled and discoloured, they’d barely resembled people.

  ‘Hold on,’ he whispered uselessly. No pulse throbbed under his thumb. He laid the hand back and pushed his head into the car, trying to avoid the jagged spikes of glass that still crusted the window frame. He pushed his hand in, feeling for a body. He touched a shoulder in a denim jacket, an ear, then soft, tufty hair that he imagined as brown although, of course, he couldn’t know; jerked back instinctively as his fingers found the face, slick with blood. He leant into the darkness, listening for a breath, a moan. Nothing. Squinting, he tried to make out the shapes heaped and tangled there and saw the paleness of flesh. He forced himself further in and touched an arm but it was quite cold and rubbery. How quickly a body loses its warmth, he thought. He could hear his uneven breath; only his breath, no one else’s.

  Then he heard a sound, so tiny that it might have been the faint creak of a branch. It was coming from outside the car, and he struggled upright and listened intently. There it was again, just ahead of him, beyond the remnants of the bonnet. If only he had a torch. He scrabbled in the pocket of his coat and fished out his lighter, flicked it on and held it at arm’s length. Its blue light wavered and, for an instant, he saw a face pressed against the car’s splintered front window, its open eyes glassily upon him. He looked away.

  ‘Where are you?’ he called softly, walking forward.

  The young man was lying up the bank, a few yards from the tree. His leg was twisted at an impossible angle, and his torso was dark with blood. But he was alive. Connor could hear the faint shuddering gasps he made. He let his lighter go out and squatted down beside him, in the damp grass and among the nettles, putting a hand on his forehead. ‘An ambulance will be here soon,’ he said. ‘Just hold on.’

  He didn’t know what to do next. The young man – hardly more than a boy, he could see now – was breathing. He didn’t need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or cardiac stimulation. Connor took off his coat and rolled it into a pillow, which he eased under the youth’s head, noticing how thick and dark his hair was and how he had a plaster on his jaw where presumably he’d cut himself shaving. The plaster seemed horribly sad to Connor. His shirt was sodden with blood.

  ‘My mates?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now.’

  ‘Gary? Dan?’

  ‘Hold on.’

  ‘Don’t leave me here in the dark.’

  ‘I’m not going to. I’ll be with you until the ambulance arrives.’

  Now he could hear the high whine of a car being driven fast, in too low a gear, then a sudden screech of brakes and a thump. He didn’t move, but leant over the body in front of him.

  ‘Where are you?’ he heard her call, but didn’t reply. He didn’t want to shout or make a loud noise.

  Then she slid beside him, and as she did so the moon rose above the trees, illuminating the scene in its ghostly light.

  ‘It’ll be here any minute,’ she whispered. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, she leant forward and kissed the young man on his forehead, then wriggled out of her own coat – a Regency-style frock-coat, ripped at the armpit – and laid it over him. She picked up his hand in both of hers and held it firmly. The necklace she wore swung above his head like a metronome; her hair fell round him.

  Oh, but she did remember that. The face that stared up at her, pale in the moonlight with huge, terrified eyes, as though she alone could rescue him. She remembered how he smelt, fear giving off its own dank and lonely odour, and how clammy, icily sticky his skin was to her touch. She had been filled with such agonizing tenderness for him, as if she was his mot
her, his sister, his lover, his friend all in one, and at that moment she would have done anything to save him.

  ‘I’m Gaby,’ she said, not to Connor but to the figure lying on the bank, his eyes gradually closing. ‘You’re going to be all right now. They’re on their way.’

  ‘Keep your eyes open,’ Connor said insistently, less because of what he’d learnt as a medic than from seeing films where the cop bends over his fatally wounded buddy and urges him to stay awake a little longer. The phrase ‘bleeding out’ came into his mind.

  ‘My fault,’ whimpered the youth.

  ‘No,’ said Gaby. ‘No, it’s not your fault. Don’t think that.’ She wiped his forehead with the hem of her skirt, which Connor could see was made of some thin, shimmering material, but was now streaked heavily with oil and blood.

  A bubble of blood escaped from the young man’s mouth and Connor took the tissue from his pocket and dabbed it away. The man jerked and Connor laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Lie still,’ he said.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Gaby. ‘Please hold on, sweetheart. Please.’

  Together they leant over the dying man, speaking to him in turn, telling him he was going to be all right, assuring him they were with him. Nonsense words in the dark. Connor felt intensely moved by the intimacy of the scene, and at the same time oddly tranquil, although he knew that the young man was dying in front of them and behind them two more people lay dead. Then the sound of a siren cut through the silence and blue lights came round the bend. All was now bustle and purpose. Several vehicles lined the road. Orders were shouted urgently. Bright lights shone on the scene, lighting it up as if it were a film set, and figures carrying stretchers ran forward.

  ‘Stand back, please,’ a man said, and Gaby and Connor got to their feet and watched as the injured man was slid on to a stretcher and taken away. For a moment, they said nothing.