The Moment You Were Gone

by Nicci Gerrard

  If I tell you all about me, so you know me, maybe that’ll mean I know myself. Whatever Alex says about the self not really existing at all.

  It’s starting to rain at last, so heavy it’s like someone’s throwing gravel against the windows. It’s dry here, the earth all cracked after the summer and the grass yellow, but in the morning everything will feel fresher. I wonder what it’s like where you are. I wonder where you live. I’ve always loved being inside, in the dark, and listening to the rain. When I was nine, Dad took me camping, just the two of us and George, and just for one night. I’d been pestering him for ages and finally he gave in. We cooked sausages on the little throwaway barbecue and played cards by torchlight. I was cold and wore my socks to bed and my jersey over my pyjamas. There were mosquitoes buzzing about and when I lay in my sleeping-bag I could hear them whining next to my ear. That night it rained and rained and rained. I remember lying in the tent, with Dad snoring by my side and George snoring at my feet, and listening to the drops falling on the canvas over my head and feeling completely safe. ‘Safe and sound,’ as Mum would say.

  Mum also says that it’s better to regret the things you do than to regret the things you don’t do (although I’m not sure if she believes it: she’s pretty cautious herself). I’m not going to send this letter. It’s not really written to you anyway. How can you write a letter to someone who’s a complete blank, an absence? This is probably a kind of diary, a diary that’s pretending not to be. I always promised I wouldn’t write a diary, full of all those stupid, embarrassing, nobody-knows-who-I-really-am thoughts. It’s four in the morning now, and outside it’s dark and windy and wet. It’s easy to imagine that not a single person is awake except me. Real diary-writing time, real nobody-knows-who-I-am time.

  But I’m going to try to get in touch. I’ve decided.

  I don’t really know how to sign off. In Keats’s last letter, which he wrote to Fanny’s mother not to Fanny herself, because it made him too upset to write to her, he said, ‘I’ve always made an awkward bow.’ Isn’t that incredibly sad? I’ll just put my name.

  Sonia

  The last four lines were at the top of a page, under which there was a blank space. The woman hesitated, then turned it over. The writing was not as neat. It looked as if it had been written in a hurry, or in distress. Words were crossed out violently.

  12 September 2005

  I’ve done it. I took the day off school (the very first time I’ve ever truanted, and I only missed physics and maths because I had lots of free periods – that’s what I’m like: I do a life-changing thing, but I make sure I only do it on the one day I don’t miss many lessons). I was surprised by how easy it turned out to be. Ridiculously easy, after all these years. So now I know who you are. And in a few days you’ll know who I am, or my name, anyway. One day I will see you. I feel like I’ve stepped over some crack, and as soon as I did, it opened up into a great abyss behind me, so now I can’t go back to where I was before. All of that’s over. My childhood is over, I suppose, and all of a sudden I want it back, more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I can’t believe what I’ve done. It’s as if I’ve committed a terrible crime. I feel bad, really, really sick and yucky, and just want to curl up in a little ball. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know.

  The woman sat for a few minutes on the bed, looking at the sentences before her. Her face was expressionless. Then she shut the book and carefully replaced it in the sequined pink bag. She pushed the bag to the back of the wardrobe, exactly where it had been before, and closed the wardrobe door. She patted out the indentation in the bedclothes, where she’d been sitting, then left the room.

  Three

  She would have behaved differently on any other day. This was a date that Gaby had dreaded for months. She and Ethan had left late – they always left late, each as bad as the other – and as the door of the house slammed, she patted her pockets, rummaged in her capacious bag, among the cheque books, lipsticks, tissues, pens, scraps of paper, tampons, perfume, notebook, comb, the jangle of loose change and foreign currency, and realized that the house keys must still be inside. In fact, she thought she could remember tossing them on to the kitchen table, among the debris of their breakfast, when she was doing her last-minute look-round.

  ‘Oh well,’ she shrugged, ‘never mind that now. I’ve got the car key.’ She brandished it.

  ‘How will you get back in?’

  ‘I’ll think about that later. I’m sure I’ve left a window open round the back or something. I guess I ought to keep my house and car keys together, but since I always lose them, I figure it’s better to be without one set and not both. If you see what I mean.’

  ‘Not really. It sounds a bit counter-intuitive to me,’ said Ethan. ‘Wallet, glasses, phone and keys – I’m sure there’s some Freudian explanation. Forgetting vital parts of yourself wherever you go.’

  ‘At least all your stuff’s already in the car.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Let’s be on our way.’

  Ethan hitched his backpack over his shoulder and opened the car door.

  ‘But doesn’t this feel strange?’ said Gaby, walking round to the driver’s side. ‘We should do something ritualistic, don’t you think?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It seems such a very short while ago that –’

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t, Mum!’

  ‘Sorry! You’re quite right. Anyway, a term’s only ten weeks or something ridiculously brief. Do you really need all of this? It looks like you’re emigrating. What’s that thing there, anyway?’

  ‘A fan heater.’

  ‘Why on earth are you taking that? Where did you find it, anyway? Hey! And that’s Dad’s favourite frying-pan you’ve got. What else have you squirrelled away?’

  ‘Mum, we’re late and we’re getting later –’

  ‘Sorry.’ She turned the key in the ignition and they jerked away from the kerb. Several books flew off the piled-up possessions and tumbled to the floor. Ethan sighed, put on his dark glasses, leant back and closed his eyes. They were in for a bumpy ride.

  They drove through London in the hot haze of exhaust fumes. Everything was limp and dirty, for the summer was at its end. Gaby sat in her familiar posture, crouched over the steering-wheel as if it was getting dark outside and she was straining to see. She muttered curses at neighbouring cars and occasionally swerved into other lanes. She was wearing a long skirt that was slightly too large for her, held up by a canvas belt, and had taken off her sandals so her feet were bare, the toenails painted orange. Her hair was tied back loosely with what looked like a shoelace, and long earrings jangled from her lobes. Ethan gave a sly grin: she had never dressed like most other mothers he knew, and when he was young her flamboyant appearance had embarrassed and sometimes enraged him. Children like their parents to be unremarkable, invisible.

  He vividly remembered an occasion – he must have been eleven or twelve – when he’d confronted her after she’d turned up for a parents’ evening at his secondary school in a long red velvet coat she’d unearthed from the wardrobe and that smelt of mothballs. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be a child,’ he’d shouted tearfully. She’d bent down towards him and replied, ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother.’ The softness of her voice and the steeliness of her gaze had stopped him dead in his tracks; his anger had turned to a vague dread. He hadn’t properly understood what she meant, and he hadn’t wanted to. These days, however, he liked the way she looked. He approved of her bold carelessness, her random stylishness – although maybe she worked hard at her gypsy appearance, standing in front of the long, mottled mirror in the bedroom and trying on the clothes that were strewn round her, turning to examine her reflection.

  ‘What?’ she said, feeling his eyes on her.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You were staring at me. What is it?’

  ‘Really, nothing.’

  ‘My buttons are done up
wrong.’

  ‘No, honestly, you look fine. Did you mind having children?’

  What?’

  ‘I said, did you –’

  ‘I know what you said. That was quite obviously just a yelp, not a question. Anyway, not children, child,’ she corrected him. ‘Singular. You.’ She glanced across. ‘Very singular, as it turned out.’

  ‘OK. Did you ever mind having a child?’

  ‘You do choose your moments, Ethan! Get me on to the M25, then I’ll answer.’

  ‘Just pretend you’re going to the ice rink, you must know that road, and then I’ll instruct you. Where’s the atlas? We should have worked out our route before we left. Dad would have done. In fact,’ he added, grinning fondly, ‘I’m surprised he didn’t think of it before he left on Thursday – he thought of practically everything else. He gave me a list of things I had to remember.’

  ‘He gave me one too, but I lost it. Poor Connor, to be stuck with two people like us. The atlas is under the seat.’

  ‘OK. Here. Take the next turning. That’s right. Then it’s the A1o all the way to the motorway.’

  ‘So, did I mind having you? No, I can honestly say there was never a fragment of a second when I regretted it, even when I was at my lowest.’

  ‘I didn’t mean me – that’s something different,’ said Ethan. ‘It wasn’t meant to be a personal question like that. More a philosophical kind of one. You gave up things. I don’t mean career opportunities or money or time or all the obvious stuff they write about every week in the Sunday supplements. I mean –’ He remembered again the sharp tug of anxiety he’d felt when she’d looked him in the eye as if he were her enemy, and said, You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother. ‘I mean, bits of yourself

  ‘My self,’ she mused. What’s that, then?’

  You know what I mean. Remember to go anticlockwise on to the M25. Towards the M40 and MI.’

  ‘Maybe I found it harder than some people do – look at Maggie, for instance. She’s got five children. Five children, for God’s sake! And she’s got a proper job, not like me. And she still manages to bake and take them swimming at weekends, and keep the house clean and beautiful. And she’s always so cheerful, and looks great. It seems to come naturally to her – though maybe I’m not doing her credit, and she finds it incredibly tiring but doesn’t show it.’

  ‘Doesn’t it irritate you?’

  ‘Irritate? It makes me want to howl at the moon.’

  ‘She’s probably on drugs.’

  ‘Anyway, what I think is that you always lose things when you gain things.’

  ‘Very Zen,’ Ethan said drily.

  ‘No, really. I chose to be a mother. If I’d chosen not to be a mother, I would have lost different things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A whole new world of feelings. And you – I’d have lost you, my darling.’

  ‘Or whoever I would have been if I hadn’t, by some random one-in-a-billionth chance, turned out to be me.’

  She ignored him. ‘Of course, I would never have known I was losing you, since I would never have had you in the first place. That’s the thing. When you don’t have children, you don’t know exactly what it is you’re losing. But you have to say goodbye to something.’

  ‘Or someone.’

  ‘Or someone.’

  ‘That makes it sound a bit sad.’

  ‘Does it? More exciting than sad.’

  ‘So why did you only have me?’

  ‘Did you mind – being the only one?’

  ‘I dunno. I used to think it would be nice to have a brother or sister. There can be something a bit lonely about being the only one. But you haven’t answered my question. Why just me?’

  ‘It was the way it worked out,’ said Gaby. ‘First of all, I was – well, a bit ill after you were born.’ She frowned and her hands tightened on the steering-wheel. Briefly she was assaulted by memories from the past, of grey days and long nights and a sense of dull despair. She shook her head, as if to scatter the thoughts. ‘We tried, you know.’

  ‘You mean, you couldn’t get pregnant?’

  ‘I had a couple of miscarriages. And then, well, after a bit it seemed we’d gone past the moment. You were older, it would have been a big gap, like starting again.’

  ‘Were you upset?’

  ‘We both were. It was oddly shocking. You can’t help yourself, you have all this hope and love invested. But when it happens, what are you mourning? Not a person. I guess you’re mourning lost hope, lost possibility, a version of the future that won’t happen now. It’s hard to describe.’

  Ethan watched her for a few seconds, then said: ‘If you take someone like Stefan –’

  ‘Stefan would have been a completely besotted father, if he’d got that far. He’s much more selfless than me. He probably wouldn’t even have understood your question about losing things when you become a parent. As it was –’ She stopped.

  ‘As it was?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Things don’t turn out the way you think they will. That’s all.’ She hesitated. ‘Have I ever told you about Nancy?’

  ‘My godmother, or non-godmother, Nancy, whom I don’t think I’ve ever met?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Not really. I know the bare bones, of course: that she was your childhood friend who went out with Stefan for ages, then left him. I don’t know the details. You’ve always been a bit cagey about her and I didn’t want to pry.’

  ‘She was my best friend. That sounds childish, doesn’t it? But she really was my very best friend, from the age of eleven until shortly after you were born. I’ve never had another friend like her.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘As you say, she went out with Stefan for ages. Everyone thought they’d stay together; that was the way it seemed. Then one day she up and left and never came back. Just disappeared out of all our lives. Sometimes I think Stefan’s never got over it.’

  ‘And you haven’t either?’

  She glanced at him, then back at the road. ‘I guess I haven’t, not really. Weeks go by when I don’t think about her, but then something triggers a recollection and it’s as fresh and sore as ever. Perhaps I’m thinking about it now because it’s one of those days – you leaving home brings everything back. It was so long ago, but it’s funny how near it all seems. When we were young together, Nancy and me, so full of hopes and dreams for our lives, we were going to know each other until we died. We were going to have such fun together.’

  ‘I never knew.’

  ‘Well, it was all over before you were old enough to speak.’

  ‘What else haven’t you told me?’

  ‘It wasn’t a secret or anything. Just a raw patch.’

  ‘It sounds heartbreaking.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gaby, ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just today that it feels like that. I’ve never been good at saying goodbye.’

  Ethan laid a hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘It’s not really goodbye, Mum. It’s more like, see you in a bit.’

  ‘I know. Sorry.’ She frowned. ‘This car feels a bit funny. Can you smell burning?’

  ‘A bit. Is the handbrake on or something?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she replied, checking surreptitiously to make sure.

  ‘It’s probably coming from outside,’ he said. He pulled a pile of CDs out of his backpack, selected one and slid it into the player, turned up the volume, then lay back and watched through his dark glasses as the fields rolled emptily by, golden and green under the heavy sky, the blur of high hedges, the swift string of houses, the sudden trees that cast a bar of shade over the hot car, then slid into the distance. Cows, stubble, swallows lining up on telegraph wires. I’m leaving home, he thought. The words throbbed inside his head like a refrain. His body was heavy in the warmth. His hands, folded loosely in his lap, felt as if they belonged to someone else. He could feel his eyelids growing heavier, until at last he let
them close …

  Gaby let her gaze rest briefly on his profile as he slept. Such a beautiful face, she thought. A wing of tawny hair over his forehead, thick straight eyebrows above eyes so deep brown they were almost black, like sloes, cheeks still pale and smooth, although he shaved every day now, a dimple in his chin like the one in hers, a small mole under his left ear. He was half man and half lean, beautiful boy; there was still that freshness about him, a physical sweetness that made her want to reach out and put her hand on his thin shoulder, stroke the soft flop of his hair.

  She let herself remember him as he was in the photograph that stood on the piano at home: four years old, in red shorts, blue T-shirt and sandals, outside his grandparents’ greenhouse holding a cardboard basket of tomatoes, and on his face a look of frightened uncertainty, as if he didn’t know where on earth he was or to whom he should turn for help. A tiny boy who used to stand with his soft hand in hers, shifting fretfully from foot to foot; who was scared of heights, enclosed spaces, beetles and flies, cows, waves, cracks in pavements, older boys, crowds, clowns, balloons, fireworks, the dark, being left alone. She used to sit by his bed at night, and he’d wind his fingers through her hair while she sang lullabies and half-remembered songs from her own childhood. He wouldn’t go to sleep without her there, watching over him like a sentinel until his hand slipped back on to the pillow, the fist uncurling, his eyes dragged shut, his breathing deepened, and then she would creep from the room. Now he towered over her. Now he shut his door on her, locked it. He lectured Connor on politics, told them surreal jokes and giggled with friends over musical trivia or the worst film titles. He played the piano when he thought no one was listening, sitting upright on the piano stool, his long fingers rippling over the keys, staring into the distance as though he could see a whole different landscape out there. He went out at night with condoms in the pockets of his ripped jeans, smelt of cigarette smoke and beer and sweat and secrets, gazed at her with an inscrutable expression on his young, romantic face, or was kind to her and Connor in a way that made her feel how he was leaving them, how he’d left. But, still, she sometimes remembered the early years, and wondered what had happened to that solemn, scared child. Had he simply vanished, melted away, or was he still lurking, waiting to unsettle them all again? Even now there were times when she woke in the middle of the night and had to steal into his room to make sure he was there, dreamy and beautiful on the pillow. But she was supposed to trust him and believe him to be safe. That was their pact. She couldn’t voice her fears. And today she and Connor were letting him go. He was on his own at last. For a minute, her eyes pricked with tears and she blinked them furiously away.