The Moment You Were Gone

by Nicci Gerrard

  ‘Stop it!’ Ethan’s eyes snapped open.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know.’

  Yesterday his girlfriend Rosie, with whom he had spent the past five months travelling round South America, had told him they should separate, not start their university life feeling tied to each other. And today Gaby was taking him to university for the first time. The back seat, laid flat to make space, was piled high with books on modern history and Western philosophy, the frying-pan, a clatter of cutlery, mugs and assorted plates, a coffee-grinder, the fan heater, a tennis racket, a bin bag of sheets and duvet, two suitcases with his clothes, a neat laptop in its black carrying case stuffed between the front and back seats, a desk lamp, a small CD-player with separate speakers lying on top of it and splitting plastic bag of CDs, many of which he’d borrowed from Stefan and never got round to returning, a cardboard box packed with tea-bags and coffee beans, several packets of stem-ginger biscuits, a few tins of tuna, a jar of Marmite and another of honey, a bottle of lime cordial, plastic pots of vitamins, a bag of sugar. A couple of jackets – including the lovely thick grey one they’d given him for his birthday a couple of months ago – and a dark blue towel were laid across the top of the shifting pile. At his feet was his bulging backpack, full of odds and ends (an iPod, a book of twentieth-century poetry, a notebook already half filled with his illegible, spidery writing, an address book, his phone, wallet, the documents he would need when he arrived, an ancient pencil case with a broken zip, playing cards, a portable chess set). And on the back of the car, its thin wheels spinning slowly, was his bicycle.

  ‘Are you nervous?’

  Really, she wanted to ask him if he was all right, but she knew he wouldn’t answer that – you couldn’t draw confidences out of Ethan: he gave them abruptly, unexpectedly. Yesterday he had returned from meeting Rosie with a set expression on his face, as if someone had taken a cloth to it and wiped away any sign of life, told Gaby the news in a curt tone that forbade her to respond, and gone to his room. She had heard the door close firmly and the key turn in the lock. Later that night, she woke and lay there, listening to the piano being played. Just a simple melody over and over again; the notes seemed to hang shining in the close darkness around her. She waited until the music stopped, then rolled out of bed, pulled on a dressing-gown, pushed her feet into slippers and stumbled downstairs into the kitchen. Ethan was there, in jeans but bare-chested. He sat at the table, looking down at his fingers, a leather band round the bony wrist.

  ‘I’ll make us tea, shall I?’ asked Gaby.

  ‘I might have known you’d find me. Cocoa would be more comforting. I couldn’t sleep – I don’t think I’m going to now. You don’t look very awake, you know – are you sure you don’t want to go back to bed?’

  They’d sat together drinking cocoa in the brightly lit kitchen while all the rooms around them lay in creaking darkness, and the starless night pressed against the windows. Ethan had got out his cigarettes and offered one to Gaby. She took it casually as though it hadn’t been about twenty years since she’d last smoked. Exactly twenty years, in fact – she’d given up when she was pregnant with Ethan. He lit them both with a shared match, took a deep drag on his, and said, with a half-smile, ‘I never thought we’d get married or anything. To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to be together any more either. It hadn’t felt right for months. The magic had gone out of it somehow – so of course it’s better like this. It should be a relief. And she did it before I’d plucked up the courage, so I don’t even need to feel guilty. I just have to get used to it.’ Then he added, abruptly, holding her gaze with his own dark, glinting one: ‘All the same, it’s odd how it hurts.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gaby had muttered, pulling the smoke into her lungs, feeling a little rush of dizziness hit her and, with it, the sudden memory of being a teenager herself, leaning forward towards the match in a cupped hand, the first acrid inhalation. There wasn’t really anything else to say. If she leant across and hugged him he’d probably pat her on the shoulder, as if he was consoling her. Instead, they’d played racing demon (he’d won, he always did), and later, as grey dawn seeped across the sky, she’d cooked bacon and eggs – conscious of the ridiculous, last-gasp domesticity of it all. That was what you did with a son who was about to leave home: you turned into a picture-book version of a mother. You gave him a cooked breakfast (even though she punctured the yolk and singed the bacon), made a fresh pot of coffee, ran him a bath; then you checked his room after he had vacated it and gazed at the blank surfaces, bare shelves, stripped bed, half-empty wardrobe, the whiter patches on walls where he’d taken down pictures, the abandoned belongings of childhood.

  ‘Am I nervous?’ he repeated now. ‘Of course.’

  He leant forward and turned on the radio, still keeping his eyes on the road. He turned the dial through the static hiss until he found a music station he liked. He wound the window down several inches and lit a cigarette.

  ‘There’s definitely a smell of burning now.’

  ‘It’s my cigarette.’

  ‘No. Burning. It can’t be from outside. Can’t you smell it? Oh, my God, look at that!’

  Thick plumes of smoke were curling from the bonnet.

  ‘Pull over!’

  They steamed to a halt on the hard shoulder and Gaby killed the engine. Smoke still billowed from the front of the car, which rocked as pantechnicons thundered past.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Ethan, after a pause.

  ‘Shall I open the bonnet to have a look?’

  ‘What will we be looking for? Neither of us knows a radiator or a – a sump,’ he said wildly, plucking the word out of the recesses of his brain, ‘from a dead badger.’

  ‘No. You’re right. I’ll call the AA.’

  ‘That’s a better idea.’

  ‘Should we get out in case we burst into flames?’

  ‘OK, but mind the cars. Get out of the passenger door.’

  After Gaby had spoken to the rescue service on her mobile, and someone had promised to be along as soon as possible, she turned to Ethan and said, in a small voice, ‘I’ve got a confession to make.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think I know what’s wrong with the car. Or, at least, why what’s wrong with it is wrong. I was driving it in the wrong gear.’

  ‘It’s an automatic. It doesn’t have gears.’

  ‘It has an extra gear for when you’re pulling a heavy load up a hill.’

  ‘And you were in that?’

  ‘I must have been. Yes. I saw when I stopped.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ethan. ‘That’ll be it, then. Shall we have our picnic?’

  ‘If you want. We may as well. You’re being very nice about this.’

  ‘It’s OK. There’s nothing we can do about it. And I’ll get there in the end. I hope the car doesn’t explode, though. All my wordly possessions are in it.’

  They scrambled up the bank and sat at the top, with scrubby, blackened bushes snared with litter behind them and the rumbling flow of cars beneath. Gaby brought out squidgy packages of sandwiches.

  ‘Nice view,’ said Ethan.

  ‘What if they can’t fix it?’

  ‘Well,’ he shrugged, ‘they’ll have to tow us.’

  And he leant back against the grimy grass.

  Gaby could tell that Ethan wanted her to go. They had carried all his belongings, in several stages, into his room. The AA man had helped them, before departing with the car. The room was square, small, and newly painted in a neutral ivory. There was a bathroom opposite and a small kitchen a few doors down at the end of the corridor, which was full of new students and their anxious-looking parents. Gaby smiled energetically, catching people’s eyes, and said, ‘Hello,’ to anyone who smiled back. She nudged Ethan a couple of times to indicate promising faces, but he ignored her.

  Now he had wandered off to make tea for them, and while he was gone, Gaby rang up for train times from Exeter to London. Then she squatted among the boxes and bin bags,
unzipped his larger suitcase and lifted out a pile of creased T-shirts.

  ‘Here we are. It’s a bit milky. What are you doing?’

  ‘Unpacking.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was being motherly, I suppose.’

  ‘I prefer it when you’re not, you know. It unnerves me. I can do all of that later.’

  ‘Of course you can.’ She grinned at Ethan ruefully. ‘Sorry. I’ll drink this and be on my way.’

  ‘Have you got plans for the evening?’

  ‘Apart from breaking into the house, you mean? I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll go to a film or something. I’ll see if anyone’s free.’ She sipped her tea. ‘What’ll you do?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘There are lots of things laid on for you if you want, aren’t there?’ She gestured at the leaflets that had been waiting for him.

  ‘I guess.’

  This was just the idling talk before leaving. She took a large gulp of tepid tea and put down her mug purposefully. ‘Will you call me soon, let me know how you’re getting on?’

  ‘Sure. Um – about what we were saying earlier …’

  ‘What were we saying earlier?’

  ‘You know, about being a mother and whether you ever regretted it.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Yes?’

  ‘Did you think of having me aborted?’

  ‘No!’ Of course they had. It wasn’t what they’d planned; it wasn’t what she’d planned. She’d wanted to work, to travel, to cast around for who she really was, to choose who she wanted to be. That was how it had always felt to her and still did in a way. She didn’t want to be responsible for someone else and lose the carefree, reckless twenties to sleepless nights, nappies and selflessness. Yet, like a perfect little clock, the growing life ticked away inside her.

  ‘I don’t mind, you know. I put it wrongly – of course, it wasn’t me you would have been aborting, just a cluster of cells the size of a pea. Lots of people think that a foetus doesn’t become a baby until it’s born.’ He got up and looked out of the window, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. ‘Rosie had an abortion.’

  ‘Did she?’ So that was what all the questioning had been about. Gaby tried to keep her voice neutral in spite of the sharp pity that ripped through her. ‘When?’

  ‘A month or two ago.’

  ‘Is that why –?’

  ‘Why she ended it? Or why I couldn’t end it, even though I wanted to? Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe she couldn’t bear to have me around after that and I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Not while she might need me.’

  ‘What did you feel about it?’

  Ethan rubbed his eyes. Suddenly he seemed very young. ‘I would have been really disturbed if she’d said she wanted to keep it. Christ, I didn’t want to have a baby. It would have been insane. It was obvious she’d have an abortion. And it was her decision, anyway. Not really anything to do with me. Except it felt so weird, knowing it was growing inside her even though it was totally invisible, and if she did nothing it would – Well, it’s confusing, isn’t it? You think, My life could change, just like that. Except, of course, it was never going to. I’m rambling.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re telling me this.’

  He could have been a father, she thought. My little boy. Then she thought, And I could have been a grandmother. Absurd.

  ‘Anyway, it made me think. Not about abortions – I still think what I always did about that. It just made me think. Everything was going the way it was meant to go, you know – the right grades at fucking A level, a gap year, a bit of travelling to “broaden my mind”, a steady girlfriend, all that kind of middle-class crap.’

  ‘And then this.’

  ‘I know it’s not much, really.’

  ‘It’s enough,’ she said, remembering her miscarriage when Ethan was a toddler and her sense of precariousness, of a blithely planned future crumbling in front of her.

  ‘Well, I’ve not got terminal cancer or walked across a continent to find a safe haven or lost my parents in a fire or anything dramatic. It’s nothing historic, just the same little things that happen to everyone. If they’re lucky, that is. But I was thinking last night how unfamiliar everything looked now, like when you drive at night and you have to really concentrate because you don’t know what’s round the corner any more. Everything looks different. You can’t think about much else. Wow, I’m really tired, you know.’

  He pulled up the sash window and the sounds of the campus poured into the room. He lit another cigarette and drew on it deeply; she saw the hollows sucked into his cheeks. Then he smiled at Gaby through the blue smoke. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine. And you’ve got to go now.’

  ‘I can stay as long as you want. We could have a walk and get a bite to eat …’

  ‘Nah. I kind of want to get on with things.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Come on, Mum. Goodbye time. I’ll be back before you know it anyway – you’ll hardly have time to clean my room, if that’s what you were planning to do, before I come and mess it up again.’

  ‘Are you all right for money?’

  ‘We’ve been through this.’

  ‘OK. But if you need anything …’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘And, Ethan …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know what I was going to say.’

  ‘I do, though. You were going to say, “Take care, and don’t worry, and time heals, and work hard but not too hard, and ring home often but not so often that you’ll start worrying I’m wretched, and eat healthy food sometimes, and make new friends, and don’t smoke so much or take too many drugs, or any drugs, and be careful on your bike.”’

  ‘You forgot “And I love you very much. And I’m very proud of you.” I was going to end on that. Unironically.’

  He stubbed out his cigarette on the windowsill and chucked it outside. ‘It’s been a nice childhood,’ he said. ‘Don’t cry.’

  ‘I’m not sad, just emotional. Anyway, you’re crying too.’

  ‘Of course I am.’ He put his arms round her and lifted her up so that her feet dangled above the ground and one shoe slipped and hung from her toe. Then he lowered her and let her go. ‘See you,’ he said.

  Gaby walked through Exeter in the drizzle, not sure where she was headed. The streets were full of young students, jostling and laughing, moving in clotted groups, and among them she felt muted, like a charcoal figure among all the vivid oil-painted ones. She had the sense that nobody could see her, and that if she opened her mouth to speak, nobody would hear the words. Her body was heavy and slow; her sinuses ached with unshed tears and her throat hurt. She wished she could speak to Connor. She wanted to hear his voice as a reminder of the world she was returning to.

  The station was a few minutes away, and when she looked at her watch she saw that if she hurried she could still get the 15.01 express to London. But she didn’t want to hurry – or, at least, she couldn’t seem to make herself do anything more than dawdle along the crowded weekend streets. Each step seemed to take a long time; she heard her feet slap against the damp pavement, and she moved as in a dream past shops and cafés. Sometimes she glimpsed her reflection, among all the other reflected figures, and was surprised how upright, energetic, full of purpose she looked.

  Without knowing that she was going to, she turned up an alley and entered a dark little café. The humid warmth embraced her, the hiss of the espresso machine and the melodic chink of cups. She ordered a cappuccino and an almond pastry and sat at a table near the window, easing off her jacket and settling back. She almost felt that she could go to sleep right now – put her arms on the table, rest her face on them, close her eyes. She drank some frothy coffee, licking the foam off her lips; took a bite of the pastry and chewed it slowly. She wondered what Ethan was doing right now. She saw his face as he’d told her about Rosie, and wanted to race back and hug him tight and tell him she would make everything all
right, knowing that those days were years in the past. He had said it had been a good childhood, but had it really? Had she been a good enough mother? She’d been chaotic, forgetful, volatile, haphazard. She remembered all those moments of fatigue and irritation, and the way she had longed for time to herself; she had that now but no longer wanted it. His present-day face – impatient and beautiful – was replaced in her mind by a younger one, red-eyed and beseeching. His hands used to be dimpled at the knuckles. His belly used to be plump, his body like a sack of flour, changing shape in her arms.

  She drank more cappuccino to steady herself, took another bite of the pastry. People poured past the window, like figures in a home movie, grainy and slightly out of focus. She wished she could go back to the beginning and do it properly, do it perfectly, do it again.

  Ethan sat in his room, among the bin bags and boxes. He should put everything away, but he knew he wasn’t going to. Probably they’d be piled up in the middle of his room for weeks. Why not? He could take clothes out of his cases, then put them into a bin bag when they were dirty; when the case was empty, he’d go to the laundrette, which he could see from the window. It seemed like an efficient arrangement. And he could pick out books and CDs as he wanted. He leant back against the bed, pulled his iPod out of his backpack, plugged in the earpieces and turned it on. ‘This is the first day of my life,’ a light-timbred voice sang inside his head. ‘Remember the time you drove all night just to meet me …’ H e winced and skipped to the next track, drank his tepid tea, then finished Gaby’s. He put the two empty mugs on top of the tennis racket, beside the bag of shoes, and lit a cigarette.