The Moment You Were Gone

by Nicci Gerrard

‘Right.’

  ‘And when we come back we can go to bed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then I’m going to take you out for a slap-up meal, with candlelight and champagne and all the other romantic clichés I can think of. A single red rose.’

  ‘You know, Gaby, I was standing at the stove stirring the custard and feeling so wretched and empty inside, and now I feel so happy I want to weep. All this week I’ve been imagining what it would be like if you weren’t here.’

  ‘It’d be very quiet and tidy.’

  ‘Quiet and tidy hell.’

  ‘Come on. Walk.’

  ‘Hug me first. Harder. So I know you’re real.’

  In the dusk, she held his hand. His fingers were warm in hers. She looked at him and he was smiling. ‘Nancy came to get me,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She told me I should come back to you.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yes. If I was her friend, would you mind? I mean, would it be too odd?’

  ‘Nothing’s too odd if it makes you happy. When Nancy first went away, I was relieved – yet every time you mentioned her name or talked about going to find her, this terrible shame and anxiety flushed through me, like poison in my veins. I’d feel nauseous for hours afterwards. Now I don’t feel like that. Secrets can be terrible things.’

  ‘And you don’t feel anything for her?’

  ‘Not the way you mean. You have nothing to fear, not from her or from anyone, I promise. But I like her. For years I couldn’t feel that. She was abstract to me, in words that started with capital letters – the Terrible Mistake.’

  ‘And before too long I want her to meet Ethan.’

  ‘All right.’ He hesitated. ‘When you were away, I went to Exeter and told him.’

  ‘Was he all right?’

  ‘All right? Well, the first thing he did was sweep our cups of coffee on to the floor. Then he stood up and called me a tawdry wanker.’

  ‘Tawdry wanker?’

  ‘Yes. I thought he’d shatter into thousands of pieces, he was so angry. He looked at me as if I was the most contemptible creature on the face of the earth.’

  ‘But then you talked?’

  ‘He said I’d always acted so above everything, and I was just another hypocritical lecher after all. Then he marched off.’

  ‘Oh. Did he come back, though?’

  ‘Not for a long time. I didn’t know what to do. After forty-five minutes or so, I called him on his mobile and left a message saying I’d go on waiting for him and I quite understood his reaction. He did come back, about an hour after that. He was very stony with me. It’s you. He’s enormously protective of you. And after a bit he was allowing himself to be anxious about us and a bit hysterically humorous – you know the way he can get. By the end he was a bit calmer – for him this happened so long ago that it feels more like old history than a live issue.’

  ‘But are you OK together?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. We will be, I hope. He feels I’ve let him down – that he had an idea of me that turned out to be false. He’s right, of course.’

  ‘Only a bit right. He’s a creature of extremes. All one thing or all another. When you left him, did he seem all right?’

  ‘I think so. Shaken, angry, rather emotional, but all right. You don’t need to worry too much about him, Gaby. He’s a resilient young man, in spite of his volatility. And he’s in love. Stupid and awash with love. Head over heels.’

  ‘With Lorna?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘My maternal antennae. Is she in love back?’

  ‘So it seems. He’s talking of bringing her and her sisters to stay with us at Christmas. Why are we talking about Ethan instead of us?’

  ‘Because that’s what parents do.’

  He stopped under a tree and took her hands in his.

  ‘Sometimes it’s important to talk about us, and say things out loud. I’ve been rehearsing this for a week but that doesn’t make it less true. I’ve only ever loved you, Gabriella Graham. You were always the one, from the minute I saw you standing in the glare of my headlights, looking slightly mad. I know we’ve been together more than twenty years and we’ve got used to each other’s ways and perhaps stopped seeing each other clearly or remembering what we feel. I know I did a terrible thing. But I never stopped loving you. You’re standing there in your grubby clothes, with your peaky face and greasy hair –’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘– and more lovely to me today than you were when we met. If you weren’t here, the light in my life would go out.’

  ‘Ooooh,’ said Gaby, smiling at him. ‘Here’s my rehearsed speech, then. You made mistakes but so did I – not a single big one like you, but lots and lots of silly, selfish ones and perhaps they add up to more in the end. I always knew I was lucky you chose me. But I chose you, too, and I choose you again now.’ She giggled and dropped his hands. ‘This is like getting married all over again, isn’t it? I might break into song.’

  ‘Maybe we needed to get married all over again.’

  ‘Shall we go home now?’

  ‘You’re my home.’

  ‘Time for bed.’

  Forty-one

  16 December

  So anyway (Goldie says I begin all my sentences so anyway), I’m not writing this to you any more because the you I was writing to doesn’t exist any longer, except inside me. I was always writing to myself, but I think maybe I should give it to Mum and Dad – not my ghost parents but my real ones, the ones who’ve been with me all my life, in foul weather and fair. I know I’ve been strange recently, and I know as well that they might find some of the things in here a bit painful to read, but I figure that most of it they know already. I think this is the last entry. Maybe I’ll give it to them at Christmas or New Year. Or the winter solstice. My new beginning, which isn’t really new or a beginning. I used to think you could start again, be someone different, find a key and open a door on to a whole other world, but I don’t really believe that. Not any more. The thing that for most of my life I thought was a key wasn’t, not really. It was just another bit of the jigsaw puzzle – like that nightmare jigsaw my grandmother gave me a few years ago, with five hundred pieces and pictures on both sides. I found my mother and she wasn’t my mother; I found my father and he wasn’t my father. They were strangers. Nice strangers. Familiar strangers. Like me and yet quite unlike as well. I hope Mum and Dad won’t mind that I visit them from time to time, get to know them. There’s no kind of threat there; I hope they know that.

  Or from Ethan. When I told them about meeting him, I could see it was hard. I hadn’t expected that. But, then, I hadn’t really thought about it, not from their point of view. Then Mum started talking about how she and Dad had always wanted to have a big family. When they got married, they started trying almost at once to have children. They assumed it would happen easily, and they had it all planned out, the way people do. They had names for girls and boys. Their future was crowded. They bought a house with spare rooms and a garden that was big enough for the swing and the climbing-frame. It just didn’t happen. Every month, they went through a cycle of hope and despair. Mum got depressed. Dad drank too much. One by one their friends had children. Not them. They had godchildren and nephews and nieces and nice holidays and a neat house and plenty of time to go to films and the theatre. They were quite old by the time they managed to adopt me – old for first-time parents, I mean. They had waited for years and years. I don’t know why we had never talked about it before. They had talked to me about how they met and fell in love, and they had often described my arrival, which, when I was younger, felt like a fairy-tale – the one thing they most wanted in all the world had been granted to them. But that space in between, of waiting and hoping, of absence, they hadn’t discussed. I guess that’s why hearing about Ethan was painful – I had the brother they hadn’t been able to give me or something. Except he’s not really a brother, is he? He’s like a sh
adow brother, a might-have-been and what-if. Our childhoods, where we might have played together and squabbled, are over.

  I liked him, though. That’s not putting it right. I really liked him. I don’t think it would be possible not to. He’s totally endearing. There’s something unprotected about him, or uncensored or something. Maybe that was just the shock, though. He had only heard a few days ago and he still seemed a bit dazed. He kept looking at me and saying I was so like Connor and then he’d rub his face hard and smoke another cigarette. He smokes an awful lot and talks a lot too – in a random kind of way sometimes, as if the thoughts float into his head and he says them. At one point I discovered we were talking about something he’d read recently on how many heartbeats there are in a natural lifetime. I think that was because he was nervous. He seems clever – but not clever in the same way as his father. He’s more jumbled up and poetic and romantic. Not precise and gloomy. He told me that when he was growing up he had always wanted a brother or sister and he used to try and persuade his parents to have another baby. But every time he said something like that he blinked and shook his head as if he was trying to clear it. I think he was remembering what it meant about his mother and father and Nancy. He said he’s never met Nancy – or, at least, not since he was a baby. It must be weird for him. I grew up knowing I was adopted, but he grew up knowing he was a single child in a small, happy family and suddenly, bang!, right in the middle of his life this secret explodes. Me. I’m the secret. Like a little time-bomb that was always ticking away only no one heard me.

  It’s all about memories, isn’t it? They say that blood is thicker than water. Memories are thicker than both. Memories are what binds you. I have no memories of Nancy, Connor or Ethan, only memories of their absence. But I remember Mum and Dad. Being there.

  Forty-two

  On the shortest day of the year – her favourite day because after that light returns – Gaby threw a party. It wasn’t an ordinary Christmas party, though: she invited only a few people – Nancy and her lover, if she wanted to bring him, Stefan, Sonia and her parents, Ethan, of course.

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Connor, when she told him, three days before it was due to happen. ‘Completely, utterly mad. It’s a truly terrible idea. Your worst ever.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It just is. I can’t think of anything more awful than putting us all together in one room. It’s like a psychological experiment about embarrassment and pain. You can’t be serious. You’ve gone too far this time.’

  ‘It might be lovely,’ said Gaby, although she was beginning to feel anxious about it herself. ‘Healing. Anyway, I’ve asked everyone already. I can’t just cancel.’

  ‘You certainly can. You’re not telling me they said yes.’

  ‘They’re all coming, except I don’t know about Nancy’s bloke.’

  Connor stared at her with an expression of absolute bemusement. ‘What about Stefan?’

  ‘Stefan says he’s looking forward to meeting Sonia.’

  ‘And is he looking forward to meeting Nancy?’

  ‘Actually, they’ve already met.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’ve already met.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’

  ‘I only knew yesterday and you were away at your conference. I’m telling you now. He said it was interesting.’

  ‘Interesting?’

  ‘He really seemed fine. Quite cheerful. He said he might bring a friend to the party. I don’t know what he meant by “friend”, or even if it was a man or woman. I didn’t want to ask.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like you. Have you told Ethan?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  Ethan also thought it was a mad idea, but he seemed impressed rather than appalled by it. His only objection was that 21 December was the day that Lorna and her three sisters were spending in London.

  ‘Then they’ll have to come as well,’ said Gaby, recklessly.

  ‘Wow. It’ll be a bit like experimental theatre.’

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘You never know until it happens – that’s one of the points.’

  Gaby bought herself a long red dress with flared sleeves that cost far too much. She ordered a crate of sparkling wine and decorated the house with lights and streamers. The Christmas tree tilted under the weight of its gaudy baubles. On the evening, half an hour before everyone arrived, she lit candles and made a fire, then prowled round the house nervously, waiting for the guests.

  Ethan arrived first, with Lorna and her three sisters, whom he introduced. Gaby bent down first to the two smaller girls, who hovered nervously on the threshold. Her heart was full of the knowledge that they had no mother. One had her plait in her mouth and was sucking it noisily and glaring. The other held Jo’s hand tightly and jiggled as if she wanted the toilet. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’m Gaby. Put your things upstairs. Ethan will show you where everything is. OK?’

  ‘Are you Ethan’s mother?’ asked Phoebe.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you know he pretended he was a doctor?’

  ‘Oh! That was a very odd thing to do.’

  She stood up and held out her hand to the third girl. ‘You must be Jo. I’m really pleased to meet you. Come inside. Let me take your coat.’

  At last, she allowed herself to look at Lorna, who was standing behind her sisters. Ethan had told her she was beautiful, but she wasn’t, not really. Yet when she smiled, her smooth, oval face became radiant and you couldn’t take your eyes off her, and when she moved inside the house Gaby saw that she carried herself like a ballet dancer. Ethan, following them all, clasping several bulky shopping-bags to his chest, was clumsy with eagerness. Love made him uncoordinated; happiness made him stumble helplessly on the stairs. Lorna, beside him, took his hand.

  It seemed like a play to Gaby, taking place on the brightly lit stage she had prepared, everyone nervous but with their parts to play. Nancy came alone, brisk with anxiety and marching up to Ethan at once. Gaby knew how she steeled herself to be like this: apparently confident and assured. Sonia, white-faced, arrived with her parents and a friend she called Goldie, who guided her through the door and stood protectively close to her to make sure she was all right. Connor wore a black suit like an undertaker’s and poured the wine. Phoebe and Polly sat under the Christmas tree and whispered in each other’s ears, giggling. Stefan arrived late, carrying an enormous bunch of flowers, and tripped over the rug in the living room. His shirt was inside out.

  The stage-fright took time to subside. Gaby managed them all into groups, steering people together, making introductions, easing them into conversation. So, now, Ethan was talking to Nancy, looking seriously into her face and nodding. There was Connor with Sonia, but every so often glancing her way as if he needed her permission; then with Ethan, anxious and eager; then with Sonia’s mother, who seemed quite calm, and her father, who was stiff with nerves. Gaby couldn’t hear what they were saying, but at one point she saw Sonia’s mother lay a hand gently on Connor’s arm as if to comfort him and she smiled to herself, satisfied. There was Lorna talking to Sonia, that transfiguring smile on her young face; Ethan talking to Goldie; Stefan showing Jo some magic trick with a pack of cards that he pulled out of his pocket, spilling slim lengths of rope over the carpet as he did so. Nobody looked unhappy. Perhaps it was working, she thought; on the darkest day of the year comes good cheer. She went round the room pouring wine into glasses, handing out little eats, murmuring pleasantries, moving on.

  ‘Have we met?’ asked Sonia’s mother, narrowing her eyes and staring into her face, but Gaby shook her head and told her she must be very proud of her daughter.

  ‘Oh, I am.’ But she sounded sad.

  ‘And,’ added Gaby, suddenly, insistently, ‘you should be very proud of yourselves, too, because you’ve done such a good job as parents.’

  She watched the woman’s face relax, smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s a kind thing t
o say. Especially this evening. Especially coming from you.’

  Now Stefan was in the corner with Sonia and her father. He was showing them his rope trick. Sonia threw back her head and laughed. Her father moved away, but Sonia stayed talking to Stefan. She was animated, intense, and he was bending towards her, with that shy, vague smile on his face. Connor was with Nancy, Sonia’s parents with Ethan, Lorna and Jo. As on a carousel, people moved slowly round the golden room. Now all the teenagers were grouped together, laughing, swapping opinions. Stefan was sitting on the floor with Phoebe and Polly, showing them tricks; their faces were rapt with attention. Stefan’s friend – very definitely a woman, with a laugh like a bell pealing – had arrived and was talking to Nancy. Gaby watched them all. Her heart was full. She didn’t know if it was happiness or sorrow that made it so.

  Now Nancy and Connor were standing together with Sonia’s mother and father. The two sets of parents. Gaby stared at them, unable to tear away her eyes, then had to leave the room. She went into the downstairs cloakroom and washed her face in cold water, then sat on the closed lavatory seat, resting her head in her hands. She waited like that for several minutes, hearing through the door the hum of conversation, the lilts of laughter. When she returned to the living room, the smile was back on her face, and she picked up the wine bottle that could take her from group to group so that she didn’t need to stop and talk.

  Sonia’s parents were making to leave. She saw Sonia talking to them as they pulled on their coats; the girl’s face was tipped up towards them and she looked suddenly very young and vulnerable. Her mother put her arms round her daughter and they stayed like that, in a freeze-frame, while the party went on around them. Then they separated, tearful and smiling.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sonia’s father, coming up to Gaby and shaking her hand for a long time, returned to the awkwardness of his arrival. ‘Thank you, and I have to say that you’ve been very unselfish. I don’t think I could have done this, in your shoes.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Gaby, blushing. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’