The Moment You Were Gone (33 page)

‘More?'

‘Yes. Wait. Connor has to be here for this.'

‘How, more?'

‘There's a reason why we're speaking to you about this, rather than keeping it secret between us – keeping it secret from you like you've been keeping it secret from us. You knew and I knew but I didn't know you knew and you didn't know I knew … Oh, God, it hurts my brain, Stefan.' She gave a giggle that turned into a sob.

‘What's the reason, Gaby?'

‘Hang on, here he is. Are you all right?'

Connor's face was chalky, but he gave a nod and sat down. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘The reason, Stefan, is that Nancy had a baby.'

Gaby was watching Stefan's face as he heard the news
and she saw the expression that flickered across it – simultaneously horrified and full of hope. ‘Connor's baby,' she said quickly, to douse the hope before it grew any stronger.

‘I see. I see. Yes.'

‘She had it adopted at birth.'

‘Her,' put in Connor.

‘Her. Sonia. She's eighteen now and –'

‘Yes,' said Stefan again. He blinked hard, took his reading-glasses out of his jacket pocket and started to polish them on the hem of his shirt. ‘Yes, indeed.'

‘She's been in touch with Nancy and she knows about Connor. Probably she will want to meet him too. And Ethan – he and Sonia both have to know they have a sibling. So, of course, we had to tell you, too.'

Stefan put on his glasses and peered over the top at them owlishly. He rummaged in his pocket and took out a length of thin, flecked rope and started to twist it in his hands. ‘Thank you for telling me,' he said formally, as a knot formed between his deft fingers.

‘Tell me what you're feeling,' said Gaby urgently. ‘Please, darling Stefan.'

‘I don't know,' said Stefan. A little furrow knitted his brow. ‘A bit dazed, perhaps. But it's all right, it really is. I think so, anyway. It'll take time for this to sink in. I've lived so long with a different version of the past. So Nancy had a girl. I never – And you're quite sure she's Connor's?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, well. Sonia, you say?'

‘That's right,' said Gaby. She reached over, took his
fretting hands between her own and held them tightly. ‘Are you OK?'

‘Mm? Me? Yes. What about you two? This must have been an enormous shock.'

‘Don't be so bloody English and polite!' Connor shouted, banging on the table hard with his fist so the glasses rattled. ‘For Christ's sake, don't be so nice and forgiving all the time, Stefan! I can't stand it.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Stefan.

‘There you go. Shout at me, hit me, anything but your terrifying kindness.'

‘I don't know how,' said Stefan. He placed the knot on the table. ‘This is called a fisherman's eye, by the way. It's quite hard – I've been practising. I'll teach you next summer, Connor, when we're on the boat together. I lack the shouting gene.'

Connor groaned.

‘It's true,' said Gaby. ‘And the hitting gene.'

‘It's not necessarily a virtue,' said Stefan. ‘Some people might consider it a fatal flaw.'

‘So what do we do now?' asked Connor.

‘Drink?' suggested Gaby. She topped up everyone's glass. An unaccountable hilarity rippled through her and she felt as though she might open her mouth and let out a howl, a hyena's shriek of mirth.

‘Eat?' said Stefan.

‘You want to eat now?' Connor stared at him with a glazed expression.

‘I can smell something in the oven. It's making me hungry.'

‘That's Connor's potato dish. Shall I take the foil off the top so they go crispy?'

‘If you want,' said Connor, dully.

‘And put the salmon in?'

‘All right. Top of the oven.'

‘There you go. What about the broccoli?'

‘The broccoli?'

‘Shall I cook it?'

‘I was going to steam it,' said Connor. ‘I'll do it. You sit down.'

‘Maybe we should have whisky or rum or something stronger than wine. What do you reckon, Stefan?'

‘Remember that I'm driving.'

‘No, you can't. You're already over the limit as it is. You'll have to stay the night.'

‘Will I?'

‘Yes.'

‘You two don't want to –?'

‘What?'

‘You might want to be alone for a bit.'

‘I don't think so,' said Gaby. ‘No. You stay. Here, finish that wine.'

‘You're both quite mad, you know,' said Connor. He suddenly felt ill, or perhaps just so weary he could scarcely keep his eyes open. All he wanted was to crawl into a dark, quiet room, pull the duvet over his head and sleep for hundreds of hours.

‘In a good way, you mean?'

‘In the best way. I need to go and lie down for a bit. Can you keep an eye on the salmon?'

‘Are you feeling all right?' asked Stefan.

‘I don't know. I feel odd. A bit –' He passed a hand over his forehead and found it was clammy with sweat.
His legs were trembling and there was a burning sensation in his throat. ‘I think I might be sick. Bad timing. I'm not running away. Sorry. Sorry for everything. So very, very sorry.'

‘Sometimes I imagine being on my deathbed. Not in pain or anything. When I picture it, it's always very peaceful and solemn. I'm just slowly dying. I know that's unlikely – I'll probably thrash around in pain and terror and scream obscenities. Anyway, I've always imagined Connor and Ethan would be sitting on either side of the bed and holding my hand.' She took another gulp of whisky and let it trickle down her throat.

‘The past is made up of many hidden things,' said Stefan, taking a large mouthful of whisky as well. His voice was slightly slurred. ‘You think you know your life and yourself, but that's an illusion. As a historian, I often have the sense that I'm looking through a peephole at a small segment of the past. It's the same with life. Most of it is quite obscure. Probably better that way too.'

‘But maybe I'll be alone,' Gaby continued, ‘and recently I've been thinking that perhaps it doesn't matter so much. Ethan and Connor can't accompany me over the threshold anyway, can they? What do you think?'

‘What do I think?'

‘About dying.'

‘I don't think about dying.'

‘Never?'

‘I never think about dying. I think about being dead.'

‘Ugh, no, I can't do that. The mind balks, it refuses.
It's like a physical impossibility to think about not being alive to think. To think about nothing.'

‘I think about being absorbed back into the earth and the air. In the end, I'll be a raindrop.'

‘A raindrop!'

‘Yes. What?'

‘I don't know. We haven't had much of Connor's meal, have we?'

‘Is he all right?'

‘I think there's nothing left to be sick.'

‘Maybe it's a virus.'

‘Maybe he literally makes himself sick. I'm serious.'

‘Are you two going to be all right?'

‘I can't tell you the answer to that. I'm not furious. I don't feel betrayed the way I would have felt if I'd known at the time. I'm simply – well, I don't know, Stefan. Something's changed, that's all I can say.'

‘Of course.'

‘More whisky?'

‘I've had quite a lot already.'

‘Can I ask you something?'

‘What?'

‘Do you think you've never lived with anyone or married because of Nancy?'

‘I haven't been unhappy, you know.'

‘That wasn't what I was meaning.'

‘It was, really. You think I've missed out on something.'

‘Have you?'

‘Only in the paths-not-taken kind of way.'

‘Really?'

‘And I always thought I would have children.'

‘I know.'

‘I've got nephews and nieces, though. That's good enough for me. Speaking of which –'

‘We're going to wait until he's home for Christmas. It's only a few weeks now. We wouldn't tell him at all except – well, he's got a half-sister. And she probably wants to meet him one day, and he's going to find out sooner or later so we figured it had better be sooner.'

‘It doesn't necessarily need to be made into a huge, tragic thing.'

‘No. That's it. I mean, it'll be odd for him.'

‘Of course.'

‘It's odd for all of us, isn't it?'

‘Very. Have you talked to anyone else about it?'

‘No. Even if I'd wanted to, I wouldn't have before I'd talked to you, because I didn't like to think of other people knowing something about you that you didn't know yourself, if you see what I mean.'

‘I do.'

‘Do you ever want to see her again?'

‘Nancy? I haven't thought of it – not for many years. I used to think I'd bump into her on the street, or look across a room and she'd be there. It didn't seem possible that she had simply disappeared and we would never meet again.' Gaby, listening to him, was struck by how they could talk now about something that had been tacitly forbidden for so many years. ‘But bit by bit,' Stefan continued, ‘that changed, until it didn't seem possible that we'd meet. She'd be a stranger now.' He hesitated, and then asked, ‘What's she like?'

‘Oh – well, in many ways she's just the same. Older, of course, and it's a shock to see someone after so many years. Like a jump-cut in time. You realize how much you've aged as well, how much time has gone by and you're no longer young. But she's still slim and classy and ironic and sharp, and she makes everyone around her seem a bit tawdry, if you know what I mean. Or me, at least.'

Stefan nodded.

‘And she still has a way of being very stern and then all of a sudden smiling. It was so odd, I was furious with her, furious and hurt, yet in spite of that I found I wanted her approval. No, not approval exactly. Her recognition. She recognizes people. Do you know what I mean? When she looks at you, you feel she's really seeing you. You don't get that with many people. I used to think that when I was with her I was a better person. More me.'

‘She loved you,' said Stefan. ‘I used to get jealous of you two sometimes.'

‘You used to be jealous of us, I used to be jealous of you, Connor was sometimes jealous of us and now sometimes I'm jealous of them, in retrospect at least. Aaaah, I don't know, Stefan. I don't even know if I care any more. I'm so tired of thinking about it. I used to think she loved me. And I loved her. Perhaps I still do. Can you love someone you no longer know?'

‘Of course,' said Stefan. ‘You can love someone who's dead, can't you? Or someone who's gone far away?' He poured more whisky into their tumblers, then chinked his glass against Gaby's.

‘Or aren't you just loving a memory?'

‘Well, you could say that love is always made up of lots of things – and memory's a large part of it. All the things you've been to each other in the past. You could say memory is what makes us who we are now, and without it we would be blank. That's what's so scary about losing your memory, because it's a bit like losing yourself.'

‘Yes.'

‘Are we going to go to bed this evening?'

‘I don't know. I should check on Connor anyway.'

Gaby went up the stairs to their bedroom and pushed open the door. The room smelt faintly of sick, and she went across and opened the window to let in fresh air, then bent down and pulled the duvet further up over Connor, so that his shoulders were covered. He shifted and muttered something, and Gaby laid her hand on his dark hair for a moment before she left him.

‘Let's play cards,' she said, coming back into the living room.

Stefan groaned.

‘Come on, just a couple of games of racing demon or something.'

‘You always beat me. Ever since you were about nine, you've beaten me.'

‘That's because I'm so competitive. If you cared more, you'd do better.'

‘Your nails are sharper than mine. And I've always suspected that you cheat.'

‘I do not cheat!'

‘We're drunk.'

‘Talk for yourself. I'm not. I'm stone-cold sober.'

‘One game, then.'

‘I used to play quite a lot with Ethan.'

‘You must miss him.'

‘I always thought that when he left Connor and I would do something extraordinary – set off on an adventure, be carefree again, be foolish and irresponsible the way you never quite can when you've got children around. Instead I went running off in some demented search of my past and created pain and havoc.'

‘Not created. Discovered.'

‘I'm not sure, Stefan. Don't you think that the act of finding something out, changes it? Just like when you say something out loud it becomes more real, more concrete or unavoidable.'

‘Hmm.'

‘I can't believe I'm saying this – I'm such a believer in talking about what you feel and facing up to what you've done, but perhaps some things are better left locked away and never examined. The truth is brutal.'

‘I agree with that, but I don't think you do.'

‘Don't I?'

‘Where are the cards?'

‘I'll get them. Pour us some more whisky. However much I drink, I don't seem to be getting drunk.'

‘Do you want to get drunk?'

‘Not exactly. But I want something to break up inside me. I thought maybe whisky could do it, but I don't think it will.'

‘Break up?'

‘Break up, dissolve, be burnt away.'

Ethan found the note two days later, when he was late for a lecture and rummaging futilely through his possessions for a pair of clean socks, all the while promising himself that he would go to the laundrette that afternoon. He pushed the pile of notes to one side and saw the signature without realizing he was seeing it. Then he did a double take and pulled it out to hold up to the light. ‘7.30 p.m.: I came to see you but you were out – if you want to see me, please call a.s.a.p. Lorna xxx', he read. He stumbled over to the window, opened the curtains and read it again, out loud.

When could she have come? He'd been here at seven thirty last night. And the night before, he was sure of it. Yes, he'd gone out later, at nine or something. That meant she must have come round when he had got lost on his bike and ended up at Reginald's house. She would think he didn't want to see her! She would think he'd read the note and simply not bothered to get in touch.

He didn't have her phone number, though: he'd never dared ask her. Before he had time to think, he called Harry, who answered almost at once.

‘Hi, it's Ethan.'

‘Ethan. Fancy a game of squash or something?'

‘I can't. Sorry.'

‘Another time, then,' Harry said carelessly.

‘I just needed to ask you for Lorna's number.'

‘You did, did you?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Why's that?'

‘I just want to ask her something, that's all.'

‘You just want to ask her something. I bet.'

‘Look, Harry –'

‘You know we're not going out any more, don't you?'

‘No. I didn't know. I'm really – I mean. God. Are you OK?'

‘Why shouldn't I be?'

‘No reason. I only –'

‘What?'

‘I didn't know.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Can I have her number, then?'

‘No.'

‘No?'

‘I don't have it any more. I erased it.'

‘Oh.'

‘For Christ's sake, Ethan. You know where she lives, don't you? Just go and ask her.'

‘Ask her?'

‘Whatever it is you want to ask her.'

‘Right.'

‘It's OK, you know.'

‘What is?'

‘Whatever happens. It's no big deal.'

‘You mean –?'

‘I mean,' said Harry, in a slow, sarcastically patient
voice, ‘that it's fine by me if you go out with Lorna. It wasn't a great romance, and now it's over.'

Ethan mumbled something about there being nothing between them anyway and – but Harry interrupted: ‘Whatever. I'm just saying it's OK. You're my friend.'

‘Harry.'

‘Yeah.'

‘I – you know. Thanks. And ditto.'

‘Ditto?
Ditto!
'

‘You're my friend too.'

‘That's better. Off you go, then.'

Ethan pulled on two unmatching dirty socks and a shirt that was clean but balled up at the end of his bag and creased. He pulled his fingers through his hair, then over the stubble on his cheeks. He grabbed his mobile, wallet and the key to his bike lock, then ran out on to the streets without even a jacket, not noticing how cold it was. He fumbled with the key, dropping it and cursing. It seemed to him that every second counted; that if he got to Lorna at once – a.s.a.p. – then it might turn out well, but that a few moments could tip the balance against him.

It did not take him long to arrive at the hall of residence where she lived. He skidded to a halt, locked his bike against a lamp-post and pelted indoors, taking the stairs two at a time. But when he got to a few feet from her door, he stopped with a thudding heart. What was he going to say? What if she hadn't meant anything by her note? And, now he came to think of it, of course she hadn't. Why on earth should he have assumed she had from the few casual words pushed under his door? It
was only the agony of hope that had converted them into anything more than amiability. He took a step backwards, blushing at the mistake he had nearly made although there was no one to see him. For several seconds, he hovered in agonizing indecision, turning over the alternatives in his mind. He could leave now, and avoid humiliation and pain, or he could stay and find out what he already knew: that she didn't love him. But what if she did? What if she felt the same way? The memory of her kiss still tingled on his skin. It was just a kiss. A kiss on the cheek. How many people, men and women, did he kiss on the cheek to say hello, to say goodbye? Everyone. Why should be imagine that Lorna's kiss had meant more than goodbye? He didn't believe that Lorna felt about him the way he felt about her, but he wanted to cling to the uncertainty. Not to know for sure meant that there was room for doubt and for deluded dreams, which, however painful they were, seemed better than the dull, flat knowledge that would fall on him once she had turned him away.

He took another step backwards. Somewhere in the distance he heard a voice. Two voices. They were coming towards him, up the stairs. Oh, God, what if Lorna was to find him standing like this outside her door? What would he say? Hello, I was just passing …

Two young women turned on to the corridor. They looked at him as they approached and one smiled in a friendly, incurious manner. He tried to appear purposeful, pulling his mobile out of his pocket and pretending to press keys to call a number. He lifted the dead instrument to his ear and said, ‘Yes? Yes, it's me. Yes.' They passed
and turned the corner, out of sight. Ethan put the phone back into his pocket, grimaced at his foolishness and strode up to Lorna's door. He didn't pause to think, just knocked firmly, three times, and stood back. He pushed his hair out of his eyes, turned down the collar of his jacket and stood up straight, waiting.

It had never occurred to him that Lorna might not be there, though it was the middle of the morning in the middle of the week in term-time. He knocked once more, louder. No, the room was empty. He pressed an ear against the wood and listened. Nothing. He turned away, and as he did so a figure came along the corridor, swinging his bag and whistling. ‘Looking for Lorna?'

‘Yes. I was just passing …' Ethan dribbled to a pause.

‘She's not here.'

‘I know.'

‘I mean she's gone away.'

‘Gone away?' Ethan echoed.

‘She went yesterday. She said it was something about her family. Her sister was ill or something.'

‘When will she be back?'

‘No idea.'

‘Oh. Where do they live?'

‘Her family?'

‘Yes.'

‘I haven't a clue. No, hang on a minute. She said it was somewhere near Bath, I think. Yeah, because we talked about the Roman baths and she said she'd never been even though she lived so close. Why?'

‘No reason. Thanks.'

Ethan left and went back to his bike, cursing himself
for not taking Lorna's number before he left. He pedalled to the station and when he arrived there, phoned Directory Enquiries and asked the number for Vosper, he didn't know the initials, near Bath. There was only one Vosper in the area, Jonathan Vosper – did he want to be put straight through? No, he said in panic. No, but could he check the address to make sure it was the right person, after all? He repeated the words the operator said – Tye Cottage, End Road, Ofden, Bath – memorizing them, then disconnected, wheeled his bike into the station. He would have to change at Bristol, Temple Meads, but the journey would take less than an hour and a half. He bought a return ticket for a train leaving in thirty-five minutes, checking that he could take his bike with him, then went and bought himself a double espresso that burnt his lips and made his head buzz. He realized he was cold in his thin shirt, and slightly dazed with fatigue and hunger, but the thought of eating made him feel nauseous. He bought a paper and boarded the train for Bristol, settling back in his seat and looking at his mobile to check the time. His lecture would be over by now. The next would begin in an hour. A whistle went and the train pulled out of the station.

Ethan tried to read the paper but soon found he wasn't taking anything in. It might as well have been written in a foreign language. He looked out of the window and saw that the blue light was already softening to a silvery grey. It was mid-afternoon. His second lecture would be under way. He should be sitting scribbling notes while the hands ticked round the clock on the wall and the day faded outside. Instead – but he didn't want to think about
what he was doing. He put his head on the seat back and felt the train's motion in his body. He had always loved travelling by train, gazing out of windows at unfamiliar landscapes speeding by, half thinking and half letting thoughts drift over his mind like early-morning mist in a valley.

He tilted his head and stared out at the unknown worlds he was passing. There was a canal, with a footpath running along it, going straight into the distance. A wood, half stripped of leaves and mysterious in the dusk. A single house with smoke coming out of its chimney and its downstairs windows already lit. A field of cows. A syncopated section of houses whose gardens led right up to the track: as a boy he had always thought it would be exciting to live by a railway and lie awake at night hearing the rumble of trains passing to who knew where. Something about the stream of lit-up carriages in the darkness still filled him with the longing to be off as well, travelling to a faraway destination with a single light bag and a few notes stuffed into his back pocket. The exhilarating loneliness of it, with its whiff of homesickness and longing. His mother loved to travel. She used to say that her idea of bliss was to get on to a train, any train, and see where it took her. He had asked her if she'd ever actually done it but she'd shaken her head and laughed, saying that she and his father would some day soon. ‘You'll see,' she had said. ‘We'll become vagabonds when you've left home. We'll do things back-to-front – stability and responsibility in our youth and recklessness in old age. Won't we, Connor?' His father had given his secretive smile, the one that meant he was saying nothing.

At Bristol, Ethan had only a few minutes to wait for a connection to Bath and contemplate bolting back to Exeter. He bought himself another cup of coffee and carried it carefully in one hand, wheeling his bike with the other, on to the second train, then sipped it slowly, trying to ignore his nervousness. Now the day had almost gone, and when he gazed out of the window he saw his face staring back, and for a while he let himself become lost in his reflected features through which he could discern the landscape outside.

At Bath, he bought a map of the city and outlying areas and soon found the small village of Ofden, and even End Road leading north from it. It wasn't many miles. He didn't have his bike lights with him, so when he left the city he was cycling in a gloomy half-light in which shapes became incomprehensible – a stooped figure became a small tree, what he took for a barn or tumbledown outbuilding turned out to be a copse, and a bulky horse or bull was just a haystack. He was shivering with cold now, and it was too dark to consult his map so he relied on memory to take him along the small road until he came to a sign pointing left to Ofden.

The village where Lorna lived was really a straggle of houses, a few larger and older than the rest, set back from the road and surrounded by lawns. He stopped at what he guessed was its centre, where there was a triangle of grass and a tiny post office, its metal shutters pulled down. Ethan had been planning to buy a bunch of flowers, a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates – he'd imagined himself standing at the door and holding out the gift for Lorna's ill sister, like a kind of entry into her family. But
he clearly wasn't going to find anything here. End Road forked left off the road that led out of the village and he cycled along it for a few hundred yards until he came to a gravel driveway, full of potholes, that led up to a battered grey house with large windows and a porched door. The upstairs windows were dark, but downstairs the curtained windows were illuminated. He pushed his bike over to the open wooden gate and made out the name of the house: Tye Cottage.

Ethan took a deep breath, cleared his throat, as if he was about to make a formal announcement, and wheeled his bike slowly up the drive. He thought a shape passed in front of one of the windows and wondered if it might have been Lorna; the very idea made his forehead prickle with sweat. He leant his bike against the tree that stood to one side of the house and walked up to the front door. Taking hold of the brass knocker, he rapped it boldly, hearing it reverberate inside the house. Then he took a few paces backwards.

There was the sound of bare feet slapping across tiles and the door swung open to reveal a girl of eight or nine, glaring at him. She was small and skinny and her dark brown hair was in two tight plaits. Ethan took in the thin face, the fierce eyes and flushed cheeks, the knobbly knees under the short corduroy skirt.