The Moment You Were Gone (20 page)

‘Slow and dreamy and peaceful sounds all right.' They smiled at each other, then both looked away.

That was what Ethan would remember, when he tried to reconstruct that afternoon later in detail. He couldn't recall what he had said, and in truth he'd been largely silent, or what Harry and Marco and Lorna had talked about. He pushed from his mind the journey back in the dark, when he had sat in the front with Marco and Lorna and Harry had been in the back, not speaking. When he'd glanced behind he'd seen Lorna's head on Harry's shoulder and Harry's hand on Lorna's thigh. He knew where they'd go after they had dropped him off at his
room and what they'd do. He mustn't let himself picture that – the fall of her brown hair over bare skin, the swell of her breast in the curtained dark. No. Instead he held in his mind those few soft and unironic moments when he and Lorna had huddled on the beach with their cigarettes, sheltering each other from the wind. He still didn't know much about her, but he had seen her close-up smile, he'd breathed in her perfume, he'd felt the brush of her hair against his cheek.

‘Mum?' he said. ‘Mum? Did I wake you?'

Gaby knew at once that something was up. His voice sounded so young. ‘No,' she lied, struggling into a sitting position and pulling the duvet up round her. Connor groaned and turned on his back. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Fine, really fine. I know you tried to call me a few times and I just wanted to say hello. Um, hello.'

Gaby squinted at the radio clock. It was twenty to one. ‘Are you really all right?'

‘Yeah, honestly. Great.'

‘Your work's OK?'

‘Kind of. I need to catch up a bit. I'm writing an essay at the moment. I guess I'll be up all night, but that's OK. I'm not tired. I quite like going a night without sleep sometimes. It makes my brain fizz.'

‘Is that good?'

‘Interesting.'

‘What about your social life?'

‘Great.'

‘Have you met people you think you can be friends with yet?'

‘Sure. A few, anyway.'

‘I'll be coming down soon to collect the car, I expect. I'll take you out to lunch or something.'

‘Lovely.'

‘The house feels very quiet and empty without you. I can't get used to it.'

‘I'll be back in a few weeks. Then I can play loud music and keep you awake and give you lots of dirty laundry. I ought to go to the laundrette, actually.'

‘I'm trying not to imagine the state of your room. Did you ever unpack?'

‘Not as such.'

‘Not as such. Hmm. Are you cooking much?'

‘To use the word “cooking” is to glorify the heating of beans and microwaving of packets.'

‘But you're OK?'

‘You keep asking that. I'm OK. I'm not lonely. I'm not starving. I'm not injecting myself with heroin. I'm doing my work, kind of, and I like it. And I'm having fun. I'm beginning to find my way around, to know what I'm doing.'

‘Good. That's good.'

‘I went to the sea today.'

Gaby heard the change in his voice. ‘Did you?' she said carefully. ‘How lovely. Who with?'

‘Oh, just some friends. Harry – I've told you about Harry. And this guy Marco. I hadn't met him before. And Lorna.'

‘Lorna,' Gaby repeated.

‘Harry's girlfriend.'

Gaby grimaced tenderly down the phone. So that was
why Ethan was ringing. He was a young man of heart-break and extremes.

‘What about you and Dad? All OK there?'

‘Dad's a bit overworked.'

‘What's new?'

‘And I've been working quite hard too. Not just with the cultural groups – I'm trying to get this idea of working with truanting kids off the ground. It's quite exciting, and it would be good for me to have a challenge like that. An adventure.'

‘But you're OK? You're not sad or anything?'

‘I'm not sad, my darling.'

‘You promise?'

‘I promise.'

‘I've just seen the time. You
were
asleep, weren't you?'

‘It doesn't matter at all. You can ring me up whenever you like.'

‘Sorry. I was just feeling a bit – you know – Sunday nightish.'

‘I wish I could click my fingers and be there.'

‘Hmm. Even you wouldn't like to be in my room right now. Once I've finished my essay I'm going to have a binge clear-up.'

He took three bags of clothes and bed linen to the laundrette and for an hour sat on the bench and watched as they churned sudsily round. Then he went back to his room, made his bed, unpacked his remaining clothes, put his shoes in pairs at the bottom of the wardrobe. He emptied all the ashtrays, collected plates, bowls and mugs from under the bed and washed them in the kitchen. He
sorted scattered sheets of scrawled-on notepaper into piles; later he would get round to buying folders and files. He opened the windows wide, then hoovered the crumbs and grot off the carpet. He even wiped down the washbasin with some lavatory paper. The room still didn't look immaculate, but it was no longer squalid.

Then he showered, shaved, dressed in clothes still warm from the dryer. He made himself a cup of coffee and sat by the window with a cigarette, watching the smoke curl out into the cold air and dissolve. Now Lorna could visit. He was ready for her.

‘Nancy?'

‘Speaking.' Nancy knew at once who was on the other end of the line, but she waited to hear her say it.

‘It's Gaby. We have to meet.'

‘I don't think that –'

‘It's not a request.
We have to meet
.'

There was a silence.

Gaby imagined Nancy's frowning face as she assessed the situation; Nancy pictured Gaby's flushed and emotional one.

‘All right. When?'

‘As soon as you can make it. I can be flexible. Name a day, and we can join up somewhere in the middle. Where's the middle between Cornwall and London? Or I can come to you. Whatever.'

‘No. Listen, I'm going to a conference about boys' literacy in Birmingham next Tuesday. If it suits you, we could meet there at lunchtime, middayish. I think it's only about an hour away from London and –'

‘Tuesday in Birmingham's fine. Where?'

‘Perhaps you could come to the hotel.'

‘No. In the station is best. There must be a café. I'll meet you at the end of platform one at half past twelve, all right? Shall I give you my mobile number?'

‘No need. I've said I'll be there.' Nancy paused. ‘By
the way, I know you were in my house. You never were very good at tidying up after yourself. That was wrong, you know. Very.'

‘Twelve thirty on Tuesday.'

The line went dead.

On Saturday Gaby went skating with two friends. She was even more exuberant and reckless than usual, and fell over thirteen times, eventually twisting her ankle so that she had to hobble off the rink and sit at the side. She and Connor had people round for a meal in the evening. Gaby lit candles so the room glowed mysteriously. Dressed in a long silk skirt and a shirt with widely flared sleeves that she'd forgotten she owned, she sat in the softly guttering candlelight, ate with gusto and drank several glasses of white wine; at the end of the evening she recited ‘The Highwayman' from beginning to end without a falter, to great applause. Everyone agreed that she was on fine form.

On Sunday she drowsed in bed late, half asleep in the rumple of her duvet and listening to Connor in the kitchen, clearing up from the night before, then making his way up the stairs to his study, the ping of his computer being turned on. She didn't need to see him to know how he'd looked as he'd patiently emplied the dishwasher, washed the pans, wiped every surface clean, then gone to his desk with his thin, clever face alert.

When she got up she made scrambled eggs for them both on buttery brown toast, read the Sunday papers, and went to a garden centre where she spent far too much money on tulip bulbs to plant ready for the spring. In the
evening, she read
Jane Eyre
, a novel she'd read seven or eight times before and whose familiarity and suppressed rage gave her comfort. She went to sleep quite early but was woken after midnight by a phone call from Ethan. From the first syllable she knew he was in distress. After he finished the call, she lay awake for a long time thinking about him. Only the sheer impossibility of it stopped her from leaping into her clothes and getting herself to Exeter there and then.

On Monday she went to work early and came home late. Connor was still out and she had a long bath, washed her hair, painted her toenails, drank a spicy tomato juice and sat for a while in the emptiness of Ethan's room, which still smelt of him even though the window had been left open for days. She went to bed with no supper, curling herself into a ball. Connor always said that nobody liked to lie in bed with their arms outside the covers. He said that everyone needed to protect themselves with their hands as they slept; it was a human instinct.

On Tuesday she took the train to Birmingham and at half past twelve exactly she was standing at the end of platform one.

They sat on hard chairs in the station café, which was half open to the crowded concourse, full of the blue haze of tobacco smoke and the smell of burnt coffee. In the cavernous, echoey space, they had to speak up to make themselves heard, and every so often announcements for trains forced them into awkward silence. Nancy hadn't taken off her thick coat; above its turned-up collar, her face was pale and wary. Gaby noticed that she had a few
grey hairs and that there were little creases above her upper lip, faint brackets round her mouth. How has that happened? she thought. How have two decades gone by so fast? Where are the young women we were just a blink away, the flat-chested girls? Lying in a hammock together in Gaby's garden, drowsy in the heat, sticky with lemonade, and giggling as they swayed under the green leaves, splashed by the sun. Swapping secrets and making plans; blithe for the future.

‘So,' she said. She was surprised by how calm she felt, in control at last. ‘Sonia.'

Nancy's expression didn't waver. She picked up her orange-coloured tea, then put it down again without drinking any. She thought that Gaby, with her hair pulled tightly back and her face naked of makeup, creased with anxiety and puffy with tiredness, had never looked so striking. ‘I gather you read her letter, then.'

‘Yes.'

‘I thought you might have done. You shouldn't go doing things like that, you know.'

‘I know. But I did. I can't undo it now or unknow what I know. That's the thing about time – it's a one-way road.'

Nancy regarded her steadily. ‘So, then, what do you know, my old friend? That I had a baby when I was young. A very long time ago.'

‘Yes, it was a very long time,' said Gaby, softly. She was holding off the words for as long as she could, letting herself drift in this curiously restful moment before she took the next step along the one-way road. Out in the station, people hurried past with newspapers, briefcases,
backpacks, all on their way somewhere else. ‘Eighteen years.'

Nancy said nothing. Outside, a distorted voice boomed news of a delay. Apologies for any inconvenience this might cause.

‘You could have had an abortion.'

‘I could have, yes.' Her mouth closed firmly.

‘But instead you chose to escape and have your daughter secretly and give her away.'

Nancy said nothing.

‘I can't imagine how that must feel. Going through a pregnancy and a birth and then letting her go.'

‘Probably not.'

‘Or, at least, I can begin to – because of having Ethan and even when I was so ill I felt sick and moony with love for him. And then the miscarriages, of course.' She waited a few seconds. ‘I was pregnant when you left. That day when we met, I was feeling so sick and I thought I might be. I went straight home and did the test and I was. So, for a couple of months we were both pregnant at the same time, though you were further on than me, of course. I've been thinking about that.'

‘Gaby, if you –'

‘Sssh. Listen. Of course, when I read the letter from Sonia, I thought about Stefan. I didn't tell him, though, if that's what you've been wondering. Well, of course you've been wondering. Or Connor. Isn't that strange? The two people I tell everything to. You'd have thought I couldn't hold it back for a moment. You know that feeling when there's a secret inside you and you can feel it growing and growing in the darkness until you're sure
it has to burst out of you? That makes it sound rather like pregnancy, now I think of it. Anyway, I've had this secret inside me. Your secret. What a secret. Did you tell people? Were there friends after me you could turn to and pour out your heart to? Or were you like King Midas, whispering it to the rushes, and thinking that it would shrink away and one day almost feel as if it didn't exist? If it had been me, I would have spilled it out sooner or later, but it wasn't me, and you're so very different from me. That's why I loved you so much, I guess. You're all that I'm not. And you've always been good at secrets.

‘Anyway, I didn't tell them. I still haven't. Every time I saw Stefan I would feel so scared of what he would feel if he knew, even after so many years. He always wanted children, a family, and there he is, lonely and defeated, and sometimes I think he's such a sad man underneath the good cheer. It sounds ridiculous, but because I didn't tell Stefan, I didn't tell Connor either. Somehow I couldn't. I felt filled up with this poisonous secret and I didn't want to pass it on. I didn't know what to do with the knowledge that I suddenly possessed.' She gave a giggle and took a gulp of her cool coffee. ‘I tell you, Nancy, it's been a very odd few weeks. I've been like some ridiculous spy, creeping round in disguise, pretending to be me. I can't believe no one noticed. Maybe nobody knows me as well as I always thought. Maybe I've got to stop being so naïvely romantic about human relationships. What is it you always used to say? In the end everyone is alone.'

‘So you decided to talk to me,' said Nancy, hurrying her along in a clipped tone. She was sitting up straight in
her chair, her hands on the table in front of her. To look at her, they might have been in a business meeting.

‘Oh, no. No, that's not what I did.'

‘No?'

‘No. I went and found Sonia.'

There was a small gasp and the table rocked; tiny ripples spread across the surface of the orange tea. Nancy's hands clenched. Gaby saw the knuckles whiten. Nancy didn't speak. Her face had gone chalky and pinched; the lines round her mouth stood out and she looked suddenly older and smaller. Gaby almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

‘I thought if I saw her I would know,' said Gaby.

‘Know?' Nancy managed, in a whisper.

‘Yes. Know if she was Stefan's. I had this belief that I'd be able to tell. Have you met her yet?'

‘No,' Nancy gasped. She leant forward, her face screwed up in pain. ‘She wasn't ready. I can't believe you went and –'

‘Don't worry, I didn't tell her who I was or anything. I just wanted to see her. And of course she's not Stefan's, is she?'

‘I don't know.' The words came out in a croak. ‘I don't know who the father is, Gaby. I don't know.'

‘I do. Not Stefan's, that's for sure. I should have known all along she couldn't have been Stefan's, of course – or, at least, that you weren't sure she was. Maybe but maybe not. Is that it? I just wasn't thinking straight. Why on earth would you have done a runner and cut all ties if she'd been his? What did you say when we met? You felt as if you'd committed a crime.' She sighed and sat back in the chair. ‘It's funny, but when I dropped Ethan off at
university, we had this lovely talk. Really lovely – the kind you can't ask for but sometimes just happens and you know even at the time that it's precious. He said when he was growing up he'd sometimes wished he wasn't an only child but had a brother or sister to keep him company.'

‘Gaby, please.'

‘Hang on. Sonia. She's lovely. She has your eyes, you know. You probably couldn't tell that from the little passport photo she sent you. And that jaw of yours. I'd have recognized her anywhere from it. I bet she's stubborn, just like you. I keep on reading pieces in the newspaper about new theories on genetics. I used to believe – because I wanted to, probably – that we can choose who we become, but a lot of scientists say that it's almost all genetic, as though we're a computer that's been programmed, and we're not really free at all, we only think we are – and even thinking we are is part of the program, if you see what I mean. Before I went into labour with Ethan, my left leg began to tremble violently; when I told my mother, she said exactly the same thing had happened to her with the four of us. Even that tremble was genetic. And Ethan – he used to be so close to me it was as though he was invisible. I was looking into him not at him. But now that he's older and so much his own person, I can see myself in him quite clearly – or I look at myself and it's his face, too, that stares back at me. He's not much like his father, neither in looks nor in character. I used to mind that for Connor sometimes. There were occasions when he seemed the odd one out in the threesome – so dark and precise and intense and troubled and self-contained and needy. You remember.'

She stopped and held her breath. The objects round her seemed clear and yet far off; Nancy herself seemed etched and unreal. She need not speak. She could do as Nancy had done and seal the secret inside her, plug the holes through which it might escape. Until now, a small part of her had resisted the revelation she had had that day in Stratford, turning it into a story, a dream that would fade away on waking. She knew that saying the words out loud to Nancy would move it into the outside world and make it solid, public and inescapable. So she paused. She looked across at Nancy with shining eyes. She felt the words from inside her and she opened her mouth: ‘But Sonia's just like Connor.'

Into the silence a voice boomed, announcing the late arrival of the train from Worcester. Nancy was absolutely still, as if the words had cast a spell over her. Even her hands on the table didn't move. Perhaps she wasn't breathing.