The Moment You Were Gone

by Nicci Gerrard

  ‘You mean tonight?’

  ‘No, it’s not urgent like that. It’s just – well, something.’

  Stefan glanced round the room. He thought of his kitchen, in which the only calm spot was the grid of knots on the table.

  ‘I’ll come to yours, shall I? When?’

  ‘Are you busy tomorrow evening?’

  ‘I have a feeling I am. There’s a supper I was invited to. Hang on, let me look in my diary. Where’s my diary? I can’t find it. I was sure I put it – but hang on, let me have a look in my briefcase. Here we are. No, I can’t do tomorrow, I’m afraid – though I could always make an excuse.’

  ‘No, you mustn’t do that. How about the next day?’

  ‘Thursday? I think so. There’s a word scrawled on that day but I can’t for the life of me read it. What would it be? Persephone or something? No. Anyway, I’m sure I can come then.’

  ‘Seven o’clock?’

  ‘I might be a bit later. It says here I have to be in York that afternoon. Make it seven thirty.’

  ‘Seven thirty, then. We can have a bite to eat.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Stefan?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘I just want you to know that I love you very much.’

  ‘Oh – well, yes. Thank you. Um, you know that I –’

  But she was gone.

  Thirty

  18 November

  When I got back today it was already dark. It gets dark so early now, and light so late. I hate it. I spent the train journey just sitting there, with my face pressed to the window, watching the sun sink, then disappear. The horizon was a kind of mauve and there was a very pale moon, like a stencil in the sky. I looked at the fields going past, the houses and the cars and the trees and the sudden canals and the footpaths snaking their way into the distance – and gradually it became dark. Once, a train going in the same direction drew level with mine, and for a few minutes it was as if both trains had come to a stop. I stared in through the lighted window of the other compartment and a girl of about my age was sitting reading a book. She looked up and saw me staring at her and for a moment our eyes locked and then she smiled, as if we were friends and would see each other again one day, and looked away again. It was really strange.

  I had imagined I would spend the journey thinking about the day I’d had, but I didn’t. Instead, I remembered things from the past. Odd things that I hadn’t even known I remembered, like sitting in the garden with a girl called Kelly from primary school, and pretending we were dentists and that bricks were faces; we spent hours poking at their surfaces with teaspoons, telling them they had to be brave. Or going swimming with Dad at the seaside; I don’t know how old I was but I do remember that he walked into the water backwards, holding my hands and the waves broke against his legs. Or being ill once with flu and lying in bed feeling hot and dizzy and very strange; the room seemed to be tipping and I kept thinking there were these slimy boulders shuddering on the floor. I had ulcers all over the inside of my mouth. Mum made soup and I had to suck it through a straw, and she kept telling me to drink lime cordial. I remember her hand against my burning forehead: cool and soft, smelling of soap and hand lotion.

  I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this. None of it matters to you, does it? Maybe I’m trying to say all that I felt after I left you, because you’re receding and I’m empty of you, and scared, and trying to get you back. But you should know that now I’ve met you you’re no longer in my head like you used to be. You’re outside me, a real person, your own self, flesh and blood. My flesh and blood.

  When we arrived at Stratford, I nearly didn’t get off the train. I thought I could stay where I was and be taken north to all the places I’ve never been that are just names on the loudspeaker, and go on staring out of the window until we arrived at a destination. But of course I did get off; I always knew I would. I walked home from the station, even though Mum had said I should call her and she would collect me, no matter what the time. I didn’t feel ready to say anything to her. I didn’t want to describe the day or somehow find a way of giving it a meaning. I didn’t know what its meaning was. I just wanted to sit huddled up on the sofa with a blanket round me and a mug of warm soup, and watch mindless TV and not say anything and not have anyone looking at me in a concerned kind of way, or every so often laying a hand on my knee.

  Though the day had been sunny, the night was cold and calm. There wasn’t any wind. Usually I don’t notice things like that, but tonight it was so still and quiet it was as if I had stepped out of my normal world and into a black-and-white photograph – or not quite black-and-white: the moon, which had been so pale, was low and huge and a lovely yellow colour, like the kind of round yellow moon you draw when you’re a child.

  So, anyway, I walked home very slowly. Although it was quite dark, it wasn’t really late, yet there was hardly anyone around. My footfalls echoed as I went. Goldie gets scared when we’re walking at night and no one’s about, but I don’t mind it. I like the dark. It feels secret and protective. You can hide in it. You can wrap yourself up in it like a velvet cloak and feel safe. I stopped at the bottom of our road and looked up it. Everything that was so familiar also seemed strange.

  When I got to the house I looked in at the front window and Mum was sitting on the sofa staring at the TV, which wasn’t turned on. Just sitting and staring. I wanted to cry at her face, which was so sad. But she must have felt me there, because she turned towards me and I saw her expression change. She made herself be all cheery and calm, as if it was just another day and I was coming home from school or something – which is what I would have been doing, of course, if I hadn’t been to see you. She stood up and tugged her skirt straight, then wiped her palms on it. I knew she had probably been sitting like that for hours, waiting for me to phone her. And I knew, too, that she would never tell me all the things she had been thinking while she was waiting like that. Goldie’s mother tells her everything – about how her dad shouts at her when he’s drunk, or how she was bullied at the office or how she’s worried about money and doesn’t know what she’s going to do. Goldie knows about the boyfriends her mother had before she met Goldie’s father. She says her mother tries to treat her like a friend, when what she really wants is to be treated like a daughter – scolded and comforted and given rules she can keep or break. Mum never tells me stuff like that, or shares her worries with me. Now that I think of it, I’ve hardly ever seen her cry. She protects me, so when I saw her face tonight, it was like being given a glimpse of a whole other person.

  She came to the door wearing her cheerful face and gave me a hug – but not one that went on too long or that would make me feel smothered. I knew she was being careful to behave exactly right, and she’d probably been planning it while she sat in front of the blank TV. Then she said that there was a ginger cake just out of the oven and would I like a cup of tea and a slice of it. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I wasn’t at all hungry, so I sat in the kitchen and she made tea and chatted about this and that so I didn’t have to speak. Then she put the cake, which was still damp and warm from the oven, in front of me and poured me a mug of tea, and sat opposite me and said, ‘Do you want to tell me how it went, then?’

  I didn’t know what to say, where to begin. I prodded the cake and put a few crumbs in my mouth.

  She said: ‘You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. There’s no way I want to pester you. As long as you know that I’m here if you feel like it. There’s nothing you can’t tell me, nothing that will offend me.’ Then she got up, kissed my cheek, and started wiping all the surfaces in this busy way, although everything was perfectly clean. I fed the cake to George, who was under the table, and I’m sure Mum saw but she didn’t say anything, except ‘Why don’t you have a long soak in the bath?’

  I want to tell her everything, but how do you discuss your mother with your mother?

  So I had a bath. I could smell something cooking from the bathroom.
Tunafish bake – that’s what I always asked for when I felt in need of comfort and that was what she was making now. Then I heard the front door open and shut again: Dad was home. I heard him and Mum talking together downstairs, and although I couldn’t make out what they were saying, I knew they would be talking about me.

  Later I went into the kitchen and said I couldn’t talk about it yet, but that wasn’t because I didn’t want to – just because I felt so tired and empty that there wasn’t anything inside me to say. I said it had been fine and that we would talk about it soon. And that I loved her very, very much and that she and Dad would always be my mother and father. Nothing would ever change that.

  What is there to say?

  That you have my face, my eyes, and when I look at you I can see me there? It sounds stupid and obvious but I’ve never had that feeling before, and it made me feel I’d missed something huge. I wanted to cry – not just for myself, but for Mum and Dad for even thinking that way, when they’ve tried to give me everything a parent can give a child. The one thing they couldn’t give me was that primal sense of the self – the self that’s handed down from generation to generation, continued, replicated. I grew up feeling unique and alone, a person who’d started from zero, and suddenly I saw that I was a link in a great chain, stretching back into the past and – if I have kids myself, which I hope I do – forward into the future. But Mum and Dad weren’t part of that. I was linked to you instead.

  That you told me the whole story? I hadn’t really expected you to, and I didn’t even know if I wanted to hear exactly how I came about and why I was given away. But I asked, and you told me. You must have decided in advance what you were going to say, because you talked for what seemed like ages. You made what happened into a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. A friendship, a brief, guilt-ridden affair with the friend’s husband, a parting – and me. That’s what I came from, that intense and tragic mess, which damaged everyone: the friend, her husband, her brother, you. You were calm and factual and didn’t try to appeal for my sympathy and I liked that: it was honourable and it showed you were thinking about me and not yourself. At the same time, it made me uncomfortable, because you were behaving the way a mother should, and I don’t want to think of you as my mother.

  That I have a father? I mean, of course I have a father somewhere, but on the birth certificate it said ‘Father Unknown’ and I assumed I’d never find out who he was. But, again, I asked you and you told me. It was as simple as that. I have a name, an age, an occupation. I have an address and a phone number. I know about his life and also that he looks like me. Or I look like him. His hair, his brows, his expression. He knows about me now. He’s waiting for me to get in touch.

  That I have a half-brother? Oh, God, that makes me feel peculiar, half glad and half full of fear, I’m not sure why. You haven’t seen him for eighteen and a half years. You don’t even know if he remembers your name and he knows nothing of me, but you think that one day soon he will. Poor thing. Poor all of you. Have I done wrong?

  That I don’t know what I thought of you? You were so cool and self-possessed when we met, but I thought that was maybe because you were being honourable, if that makes sense. In fact, that’s the strongest impression I took away with me – that you had a kind of integrity and were someone that people would trust, even if they didn’t particularly like you. That you wouldn’t let people down but kept your word. That you said what you believed and didn’t mind what people thought of you. A strong woman. A bit hard, maybe. A bit sad. But perhaps I’m inventing that because I know what you went through. I could see how it felt so painful for someone like you to behave like that, to betray your friend and your boyfriend in the way you did. You must have felt terrible.

  What did you think of me? Did you realize I was so nervous I could hardly speak? My tummy turned to liquid and my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth and my throat went dry as chalk. Did you know I wanted to hug you, hit you, run away? I wanted you to be proud of me, and I desperately wanted not to care. Did you see that I was trying not to cry? It wasn’t anything you said in particular, it was everything. The sheer fact of us. I looked at my hands on the table and then at your hands and they were the same. I looked into your eyes and they were my eyes. I listened to your voice and it was telling me my story. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long, for almost the whole of my life, and now it’s come and I don’t know what to do with it any more. I thought it would feel different from this.

  It’s half past three in the morning, the dead hours. I’ve been writing this for ages. My hand feels cramped and my fingers are stained with ink. I’ve come to the end but I don’t want to stop, because when I do I’m alone with myself and it’s hours till morning and I don’t know what to do. I can’t sleep, not tonight. I don’t want to dream.

  Thirty-one

  Ethan left his tutorial and unlocked his bike. It was half past three and he hadn’t had much sleep the night before – his habit of binge-working was continuing. Yet he didn’t feel tired any more: rather, he was full of a restless, churning energy. At six o’clock he had arranged to meet friends in the pub, and he didn’t know what to do with himself until then. In other circumstances, he would have tracked down Harry and persuaded him into a game of squash – but he didn’t feel like seeing Harry and, besides, he was very likely with Lorna, and he most certainly didn’t want to see Lorna, not when she was with Harry, anyway, and not after their last meeting. His cheeks burnt when he thought of it, and his heart pounded uncomfortably hard.

  He had to get away. He got on to his bike, and started to pedal, although he had no idea where he was headed, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that the wind blew into his face and his legs ached from the effort. Before long, he found that he had left Exeter behind him and was headed into open countryside. If he looked back, he could see the city in the distance, with its soaring cathedral and its widening river, and he found it strange to think of himself there, pacing its narrow streets, feverish with unrequited love. The light was thickening and he could feel that soon dusk would fall. Already, the vivid greens of the fields and the rich golds and browns of the trees had become muted in the fading day. He was wearing a light jacket and no gloves and was starting to feel cold, although his face glowed with effort.

  He took lefts and rights at random, cycling at full speed down narrow lanes with hedges high on either side, bending over his handlebars, seeing only the road in front of him. Fields and farms flashed past. Woolly sheep and cattle with long horns. Cars passing in the other direction. Signposts signalling the way to villages with unfamiliar names. Crossroads where he stopped, then turned in whichever direction looked emptiest, wildest, most full of promise.

  At last he came to a halt and dismounted. His eyes were watering in the wind and he could no longer ignore how dark it was, or how cold he felt. His fingers were white claws from where they had clenched the handlebars and he blew on them to warm them, stamping his feet. He had absolutely no idea of where he was, not even of the direction in which he was going or of how many miles he had come. His watch told him it was nearly six o’clock: at this moment, he should be walking along a well-lit, populated street towards the pub to meet his friends. There were already pale stars low in the sky and the sun had sunk below the horizon. Cursing, he fumbled in his pannier, brought out his mobile and tried to turn it on, but he had failed to recharge it and the battery had run out.

  It seemed to him that he was in the middle of nowhere. The lane was sunken, the hedges high and obscuring, so he could get no sense of where it came from or led to, or remember how many lefts and rights he had taken to lead him to this remote spot. He pushed his bike along the road until he reached a gate, which revealed only a patchwork of fields that rolled away to the horizon.

  He remounted his bike and cycled in the direction from which he had come, but the network of lanes was like a maze and after several minutes he felt almost sure that he had looped back on himself and was as f
ar away from the main road to Exeter as he had ever been. What was more, it was becoming increasingly difficult to see. The landscape around him had lost all colour and was a dark grey; trees were massed shapes in the hedgerow; the road twisted away from him.

  ‘I’m lost,’ he said out loud, and felt unaccountably contented. He biked fast up a small hill and at the top propped his bike against a stump and climbed on to the gate beside it. He eased his cigarette packet out of his jeans pocket and, after several failed attempts, lit one. He took a deep drag, then let the smoke curl out into the twilight and dissolve. As he sat there, cold and tired, he was filled all of a sudden with a piercing happiness that was, at the same time, a deep melancholy. He felt that he was at the heart of life’s meaning, where happiness and sadness met, and where the sense of one’s self blurs – and yet he knew he was being ridiculous, infantile and was overwrought.

  From where he was perched on the cold bar of the gate, he realized he could see lights twinkling in the shallow valley below. He threw his cigarette on to the damp grass, jumped off the gate, and set off once more to ask for help and directions. It was oddly hard to find the source of the lights, for they disappeared as he descended the hill, and it was only after a couple of wrong turns up muddy tracks that led nowhere that he found himself cycling up a driveway towards a building with lights glowing from the ground floor. There was a tractor with vast wheels and several pieces of farm machinery in the muddy stretch of land in front of the house and to one side a shelter with a corrugated-iron roof, so Ethan assumed it was a farm, but if so it was small and run-down. A dog barked ferociously as he approached, then came belting out, a large shape with white teeth and shining eyes.

  ‘Good dog,’ he said nervously, braking to a halt and dismounting.

  The shape lunged towards him and stood a few inches off, growling and giving intermittent, sinister barks of warning. Ethan did not move.