Since You've Been Gone

by Anouska Knight

“Are you all right?” he asked, waiting by the door next to the lifts. He laid the shoes down. “Do you want to put these back on? Or we can sit for a minute?”

  He was asking me too many things at once. I shook my head as he tried to straighten what was left of his shirt. The blood streaking from his eyebrow had already reached his jaw. I’d seen enough of Charlie’s blood to know when stitches were needed.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked me for the second time tonight. His nose was bloodied, too.

  “No,” I managed. A little shaken maybe, but more astounded at how quickly things could get out of hand.

  Ciaran led us up a set of steps, where the scents of the street outside—sweet herby Italian food and exhaust fumes—came to meet us.

  “Do you need to get checked out at the hospital? Do you want to involve the police?”

  I shook my head. Ciaran had given more than he’d got; I didn’t think he needed to go to the police station covered in blood. And I believed him when he implied that he’d deal with them later on. They’d believed it, too.

  “Can I take you somewhere, then, Holly?” he asked.

  I couldn’t go to Martha’s—she’d freak. “I need to go home,” I said.

  “I’ll take you. I can’t go back inside like this.”

  “But it’s your party,” I said.

  He smiled crookedly. “Very few of those people are here for me.”

  He eyed the line of waiting cars. “Do you want to share a ride? I can drop you off on the way.”

  “I don’t live in Hunterstone.”

  “I know,” he said, taking me by the hand again.

  Sat between two black cabs, the Bentley looked as though it were trying to blend in with its poorer cousins. Ciaran tapped on the glass and it slid down, and the same guy who had paid for Fergal’s cake peered out.

  “Freddy’s lending me the car,” Ciaran said.

  The driver nipped out to hold the door open for us. I climbed in the back, while Ciaran skipped round to let himself in the other side.

  “What happened to you?” the driver asked.

  Ciaran leaned forward, the blood streaking over his eye. “Isn’t it about time you came and worked for me, Toby?” he asked as we pulled out into the traffic.

  chapter 17

  Under the last lights of Hunterstone a red slick glared angrily against what was left of Ciaran’s shirt. It hadn’t got much larger since we’d left the city, but it was conspicuous enough. Almost as conspicuous as the silence in the back.

  “I think somebody should take a look at that. Before we leave the town,” I tried. The hospital was only ten minutes from here, and that eye needed something doing.

  “I’ll see to it when I get home,” Ciaran reassured me.

  I didn’t believe him. Toby punched my address into the GPS as Ciaran dictated it, then silence reigned once more.

  The light of my porch fending desperately against the dark was Toby’s only point of reference when home finally drew into sight.

  I popped the car door open before anyone else felt the need to do it for me, and stepped tender feet onto the cool earth. Toby’s phone interrupted my attempts to thank him and Ciaran left him to take the call while the lantern drew us nearer like moths.

  “Will Mary be at the manor?” I asked.

  Ciaran swayed slightly on his feet.

  “No, she went home at five.” Ciaran’s footsteps steadied, giving way to a snuffling under the door.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him, a silly question for a man who looked like he’d been run over.

  “Yeah, I just need a few aspirin. Too much champagne.”

  “Ciaran, does your head hurt? I think you should go and get looked at.”

  “I’ll be fine. Are you okay? Is there someone here to look after you?”

  “Ciaran?” Toby called across the yard. “I’ve got to get this car back, sharpish.”

  “Hang on, Toby,” he called back.

  Dave started to growl at the foreign voices.

  “Shh,” I said, “don’t wake my neighbour.”

  Toby dashed over to us and thrust some money into Ciaran’s hand. “You’ll have to get a cab from here, mate. I’ve got to get back before they have me done for theft. You’d better have a job lined up for me, mate.”

  I still had a ready supply of first aid good enough to serve a forester in the kitchen cupboard. Ciaran had gained his injuries on my behalf—patching him up was the least I could do. Another growled warning slipped under the door.

  “What have you got in there?” he asked as the pebbles skittered across the yard.

  “A man-eater. Just relax and he’ll leave you alone, once he’s patted you down. You might want to lose your gun,” I whispered.

  Ciaran smiled at the joke.

  Warmth welcomed us into the cottage. Dave ignored me completely and went straight for Ciaran’s groin.

  “Whoa, boy,” Ciaran yelped, under Dave’s close scrutiny. Bravely, Ciaran pushed past him, following me through to the kitchen.

  “Nice kitchen. Did you do this?” he asked, surveying his surroundings.

  The bandage box hadn’t been used in a while, but it was stocked with Steri-Strips and antiseptic swabs. I headed for the sink and knocked the tap on. Reflected in the black glass before me, Ciaran was already releasing the remaining buttons of his ragged shirt. My skin screamed as the water suddenly scalded.

  I pulled a stool over from the breakfast bar and sat it next to the sink for him.

  “We should bathe your eye.”

  I busied myself with cotton buds while he took his place, the cummerbund nicely hiding any additional distractions. A large cut glistened with newly clotting blood, gently giving under dampened cotton swabs. I could smell the effort on him, where the sweetness of his aftershave had given way to blood and sweat as he’d fought.

  He turned tired eyes up to me. I hadn’t squeezed hard enough this time. My arm tickled as a pink droplet chased down to my elbow. I watched another topple onto his collarbone.

  “Your neck isn’t red anymore,” he said, watching my face as I worked.

  The cut was about an inch long over his right eye, and gaping with the swelling.

  “I’m just going to put a few butterfly stitches on there.” I swallowed.

  “Do you always blush around men?”

  These packets were a bugger to get open. “Only the ones who make me uncomfortable,” I answered.

  “You’re not uncomfortable now.”

  I tried not to hurt him as I pulled closed the mouth of the cut, and stuck it there. It helped that he didn’t flinch, but he’d still have a scar for his trouble.

  “No,” I said, “not now. Thank you, for getting me out of a pickle.” Had his lower lip been hurt, too? It looked not swollen, but full.

  “Don’t mention it.” His aftershave was fighting back against the scent of injury, until I broke the antiseptic out for the grazes on his knuckles.

  “I’ll be okay. I’ll just wash them off,” he said. Good. I hated the smell of antiseptic. Too much like hospitals.

  Dave nudged me over to rest his head on Ciaran’s lap.

  “Security?” he asked, shoulders relaxing with a deep exhalation.

  “Company.”

  Ciaran dabbed a towel to his neck. “It’s customary for a rescued maiden to reward her dashing hero.”

  “Sorry, I’m all out of embroidered hankies,” I said, watching him.

  “I’d settle for a drink?”

  I was so out of practice, I hadn’t even thought about that. “Sorry. Tea? Coffee?”

  “I was thinking more a glass of the red?”

  I flicked on the kettle. “Coffee, then?”

  “Perfect.” He grinn
ed.

  The swelling over his eye looked sore, giving me at least some protection against the butterflies when I looked at him.

  “Would you like an ice pack? Well, a bag of peas?”

  “No, thank you. James Bond doesn’t do peas.” His smile was crooked again.

  I set two cups down on the bar and stole a glimpse of his back as he turned to wander the kitchen. It was only supposed to be a glimpse, but I was caught off guard by the large image governing his left shoulder. The kettle clicked, unsnagging my attention from the young woman, tattooed in wistful portraiture. I fought the temptation of another look. I didn’t think I’d hold off for long.

  “I’m just going to grab you a shirt,” I said, disappearing upstairs.

  I dusted off one of the simple navy shirts Charlie had kept for council meetings. Better to lose one of those.

  Ciaran had made himself comfortable in the window seat, the cummerbund discarded next to him. He seemed bigger, athletic, without morning tiredness to relax wide squared shoulders. Strands of the woman’s hair peeped over his collar, just into view. His hands cradled one of the two steaming mugs I’d left on the breakfast bar. The other was on the coffee table in front of him.

  “I’m not sure how well this will fit. It may be a bit big.”

  Ciaran stood, taking the shirt from me.

  “Thanks. I’m sure it will be fine.”

  I watched one brown arm disappear into a sleeve and turned my attention to the other mug.

  “So whose shirt am I stealing?” he asked, buttoning up. It was a closer fit than I’d expected.

  “Charlie’s. It’s one of Charlie’s shirts.”

  “Charlie...brother? Or Charlie, ex?” he asked, raising his eyebrows light-heartedly. It felt so good to say his name. It was on the tip of my tongue, all the time, but my lips missed the feel of it. I tried it out again.

  “Charlie, husband.”

  Uncertainty wasn’t a look I’d seen Ciaran wear. I threw him a smile to take the edge off.

  “Sooo, where is Charlie now?” he asked, his still uncertain eyes checking the room.

  “At St Nicholas’s churchyard, in the village,” I said, nodding at the truth of it. “Charlie died. Nearly two years ago now.” My hand patted against the forearm it lay over. “So, you can relax. No one’s about to come charging through the door with a shotgun.”

  Ciaran didn’t look relaxed, but strangely I felt a lot more at ease now that I knew it wasn’t going to creep up on me.

  “I’m sorry, Holly. If I’m making you feel uncomfortable by being—”

  “Actually—” my lungs filled with air “—without sounding like some crazy widow, it feels good to talk about him. People avoid the subject, and I know that they mean well. It’s just, sometimes, it’s like he never existed.... But he did.”

  If he was going to bolt, he’d probably do it now. Make some excuse about the toilet and get out of Dodge.

  “How long were you married?” he asked, patting down the shirt he felt less than comfortable in.

  “Six months.”

  “Six months?” His lips parted to allow an expulsion of breath. “That’s...rough.”

  I almost laughed at the understatement.

  “Yep. Quite rough. We’d been together since our teens. I got to keep him for ten years.” I smiled.

  Ciaran’s eyes narrowed the way I’d seen them do before. “Still not enough, though,” he said.

  “No. Still not enough.” The first burn of unexpected tears stirred behind my eyes. Just in case I was about to be rushed, I hid my face in the mug, gulping down the last of my drink and any notions of blubbing along with it. All better.

  “So, Mr Bond.” A quick regain of composure. “I hear you’re quite a hit with the ladies?”

  His face softened as we moved to a more manageable subject. He stifled a laugh, looking down to the floor between his knees.

  “Why would you think that? I’m single.”

  “Call it female intuition.” That, and the power of vision.

  “Well, you have to look, right? To find The One.”

  I wondered what all of those women had thought of the tattooed image of The One girl who had literally made it under his skin. She must have been special to him.

  “Haven’t you ever been in love?” I asked, probing. Again.

  “No,” he said, giving nothing away. “But I like looking.” He shrugged.

  “Did Charlie do the work on the kitchen?” he asked, taking in the features that didn’t belong to a hundred-year-old farmhouse.

  “Mostly. His friends helped out, too. The only time we ever had full occupation at that table.” Ciaran followed my eyes to the banqueting table surrounded by a quantity of chairs no normal-sized family would need.

  “They weren’t dwarves, were they?” It was enough for a smile. How refreshing to talk about this stuff. “What did he do? For work, I mean. Builder? I’m guessing something manual to give him wrists this wide.” Ciaran held up a hand to show the only place Charlie’s shirt came up big on him.

  “He did have big wrists.” I smiled, happy that he’d noticed it. These things never found their way in to conversation now. “And huge hands. Which was good because he did a lot of work with chainsaws, heavy equipment. That sort of thing.” My wedding band was always slipping inside Charlie’s where they hung on my chain.

  “Ah, a woodsman?”

  “Yep. And forest manager. It was his job to make sure the dwarves didn’t chop too many trees down.” I smiled, looking at the table where I’d kept them all in cooked breakfasts. Dwarves would have been cheaper to feed.

  “I work in construction, mainly. And we have the health-and-safety boys on our backs all the time. But I remember reading somewhere that the rate of fatalities and serious accidents is something like sixty times the national average for forestry workers.”

  It was an understandable assumption. Charlie, flattened by a tree.

  When I’d taken the call from the commission office that morning, and heard the urgency in her voice, it was the first thing that had gone through my mind, too. A fall. A load breaking free. A serious cut.

  “Charlie didn’t have an accident at work. I was always fussing at the things he did, the risks...but it wasn’t the forest that cost Charlie his life. It was the driver who smashed into him on his way there.”

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken about Charlie without the weight of sympathetic eyes or the looming threat of a change in subject. Ciaran didn’t shy away while I talked, telling him things he didn’t need to know about my life. With those pressures lifted, I was free to bring Charlie home, to talk him back to being something more than a ghost.

  “What happened to the other man? Was he prosecuted?”

  The mug was already cool in my hand.

  “Do you want another coffee?” I assumed he wanted another and took his cup with mine. “No, he wasn’t prosecuted, not that that would have changed anything. He died from his injuries, too. When they released the report, they said he probably shouldn’t have even been driving. For some reason, when you hit seventy you have to apply to renew your licence.” The weight of the kettle saved a refill. “But it’s self-certified. No one actually tests you to make sure you can still see.”

  “So he didn’t see Charlie?”

  “He didn’t see the kerb. When he clipped it, it was enough to send his car spinning out of control and Charlie was in the wrong place. No greater reason than that. No act of heroism, no nobility. Just gone.” Because sometimes, that’s just what happens.

  Ciaran listened as I told him all about the plans we’d had. Of trying our hands at living off the land here and making the house more environmentally friendly, the amazing things Charlie was going to achieve for the local kids if he could just talk th
e commission around to his ideas. It was a brave new world for Ciaran, and a world I enjoyed revisiting, but as the hours rolled by coffee eventually took too long to make, replaced with the much smaller effort of pouring the red.

  I quickly relaxed around my new friend. Dave was here, and Ciaran wasn’t stupid. Besides, women chased him, not the other way round. I was safe as houses, enjoying the fun of exchanging snippets of lives the other had no feel of.

  “So you’ve never been to Hollywood?” he asked, emptying his glass.

  “Ha! No! Is that in America? Oh, yeah. I have a theory about America. Do you wanna hear it?” My mother had always said that a woman should never drink to the point of slurring.

  “A theory?”

  “Yeeeep...” I lost my trail of thought.

  “You were saying?” Oh, Lordy, another smile.

  “Yes. America! I don’t think it exists.” I chortled. “I don’t! I think it could be a trick, on the TV. I’ve only seen it on TV!”

  “It exists.” Ciaran smiled, moving around me to the sink again. “If it doesn’t, I want my money back.”

  “Have you been?” I asked. The yip in my voice seemed loud even to me.

  “I took a girl there once,” he said, rinsing the mugs. Boo, I didn’t want to go back to coffee. “She was in a girl group, if I remember correctly.”

  “Oh, that’s so romantic!” I cooed.

  “She was desperate to see the sights. I was desperate to get into her Agent Provocateurs,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows.

  Dave jerked awake when my cackle burst like a firecracker through the kitchen.

  “But, women throw themselves at you! Why did you do that?” The spent bottle on the side was moving all by itself. It was like a star in the sky—the more I tried to look at it, the less focused it became.

  “Not all women. She was a particularly hard nut to crack.”

  “And did you...crack it? Was she impressed with the sights in...in...?” Where did he say again? Closed eyes aided concentration. “Hollywood?” It had got very dark. Ah, no. Eyes open.

  “It did the trick. Wouldn’t that impress you?” Something steamy and milky appeared in front of me. Ugh. I pushed it away.