The Moment You Were Gone

by Nicci Gerrard

‘Why did I come?’ she mused. ‘I don’t know, really. I always thought I’d see you again. It seemed inconceivable to me that we would never meet, that we’d die without meeting. I met you when I was eleven. That’s thirty-odd years ago. We always said we’d know each other when we were old. Do you remember? Do you remember in the tree-house we made a promise to each other? Do you?’

  Nancy nodded.

  ‘You were always there. You were there when I started school and don’t forget, you chose me – you came up to me in the second week and said you thought we could be friends and would I like to share a locker. You were there when I had my first period. You were there when I had my first boyfriend, and you were there when I got dumped – I hate that word – we never used it, did we? “Chucked”, that’s what we said. Anyway. Exams, parties, shopping, cooking, dieting, everything. You were always at my house, sleeping over, doing homework with me, revising with me, sharing secrets, giggling, crying – you were my sister, the one I didn’t have but always, always wanted.’

  ‘Gaby –’

  ‘No, shut up. Listen. And I think – I thought, anyway – that I was your sister, too. Especially after your mother started acting so oddly, going out with all those strange men and stuff, and we were your family, really. You practically lived with us. When I remember my childhood, you’re in it. People often talk about how when their marriage splits up, one of the things that’s so painful is that they’ve got no one to share memories with any more. All the things you did together don’t exist any longer. But I think it’s like that with friendships too. With our friendship, anyway. It was as if, when you upped and left, you’d rubbed away half of my life. It almost felt that it hadn’t happened. Who could I say, “Do you remember?” to. Who’d get all the subtexts, all the stupid hidden meanings? You know that lovely feeling when you hear a phrase, or see a particular sight, and you can catch someone’s eye and you know that they’re thinking what you’re thinking. But you don’t have that with many people, and I thought I had it with you. I thought you had it with me. I thought it was unconditional. The one area of my life I felt entirely certain about.’

  She tipped back the glass and swallowed hugely, in uninhibited full swing now, the stiffness and fear dissolved by wine and tears. She felt liquid inside, all the feelings, memories and inchoate desires sloshing together in a dark, rolling wave of emotion. She could talk all night. She could talk for ever. She could change the past and set the future on a different course, just with the lava flow of her words.

  ‘Please, Gaby –’

  ‘Listen, will you? When you started going out with Stefan, it felt really, really weird at first. I worried that we wouldn’t be so close. You had other loyalties; you wouldn’t be able to confide in me – certainly not about your love life, anyway. I thought I wouldn’t be so close to Stefan either, and you know how we are. It was always him and me against the world – though, of course, darling Stefan’s not against anyone, is he? He doesn’t have it in him. Maybe that was why you left him. Maybe he’s just too nice for his own good. He wasn’t even bitter or angry about you leaving like that – just bewildered and terribly sad. It was like seeing the lights turned out. He continued with everything exactly the same, but there was no life in it. Anyway, I’m getting away from the point. More wine, please. The point was, I can’t remember what the point was. Yes. The difference it made to our relationship. It was all right. Wasn’t it all right? We all dealt with it brilliantly, I thought. At first, I dreaded one of you finishing with the other, but after a bit I forgot to dread it. It seemed so solid, so good.

  ‘I’m listening to myself speaking and I know I probably seem ridiculous to you. You’re all silent and dignified and orderly, and I’m like some kind of bubbling Icelandic geyser. But I made a decision when I was walking here that I didn’t care about being cool or pretending it’s not a big deal. You know when people fall over in public and they’re bleeding copiously or their ankle has swollen so much they can hardly walk? They jump up shakily and insist they’re fine, it’s nothing, because for some reason it’s embarrassing to say it’s really painful. I don’t want to be like that. It’s really painful. Do you hear me? Do you?’

  She stood up suddenly and went to the window, pressed her hot forehead against the cool pane and looked out into the night. She could make out, through the reflection of her own face, the lane and the tree where she’d hidden, and beyond that nothing but darkness. Behind her, the fire crackled.

  ‘Why have I come?’ She turned back to face Nancy. ‘Why? To be honest, I’ve no fucking idea. Not really, not the way you mean. I just suddenly found I had to. I didn’t want you to fade to a distant memory and not to matter any more. I wanted you to matter, don’t you see? I wanted to hurt about it, even though I should have grown up by now and accepted that it was all so long ago when I was a foolish young woman. I’m a foolish middle-aged woman now and I don’t want time to heal everything. I hate that. It’s crap. And I wanted to see if it mattered to you, too. I couldn’t bear it if you’d forgotten about me and us, when all this time I’ve remembered. I wanted you to hurt, too. I’ve been waiting for this day. For this moment.’

  ‘If you’ll let me speak.’

  ‘And I had to find out why you went away like that, and why you never came back.’

  ‘I think –’

  ‘I always expected you to come back. More wine, please.’

  ‘I always expected to come back as well.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘And yet it seemed impossible – more and more impossible as the years passed.’ Nancy was speaking quietly and slowly, not looking at Gaby but gazing into the distance. ‘I’ve always been a bit of a bridge-burner. I’m good at beginning again. I’ve always been like that, you know it as well as I do. Even when I was young, if someone offended or insulted me, or if they did me wrong, that would be it.’

  ‘But it was you doing the wrong.’

  ‘Well, exactly. That made it even more imperative to start again.’

  ‘So you just walked away.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Gaby rubbed her face. The elated anger was dying down and she felt weary. One side of her was hot from the fire and the other still a bit chilly. ‘But, Nancy, it was precisely the walking away that was the wrong thing. Leaving Stefan – of course that was awful for him, one of those everyday tragedies, but it wasn’t wrong, a crime.’

  ‘It felt like a crime.’ Nancy levelled her turquoise gaze at Gaby; her voice was matter-of-fact.

  ‘So you fled the scene?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And never came back?’

  ‘And never came back.’ Nancy poured more wine into her own glass and held it up, squinting at it, then taking a sip. ‘I didn’t know the way.’

  ‘Was there someone else?’

  ‘No. It was just me.’

  ‘Are you a lesbian? Is that what it was?’

  ‘No. I’m not a lesbian. Anything else?’

  ‘Do you have any kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t you want them?’

  ‘That’s enough, I think.’

  ‘Do you? Have you been happy?’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘In your life.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘Have you been in love?’

  ‘Gaby –’

  ‘What? Why is that a wrong question? I’ve come all the way from London. Why can’t I ask you that, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been in love. Yes, I’ve lived with men. Yes, I live alone now.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What? Yes, I’ve thought about you. Is that it? Does that make you feel better? I’ve thought about you, Gaby. So, then.’

  She leant forward and stirred the fire with a poker. The flames leapt higher, casting writhing shadows over the room. ‘Do you know what your problem is, Gaby?’

  ‘I have lots of problems, but they’re probably not the ones you
’re thinking of. I imagine you’re going to tell me, though.’

  ‘Your problem is that you always think you can make things better.’

  ‘Oh.’ Gaby looked down at her hands, noticing that there was still dirt under the nails. Connor had often said the same about her, and even Ethan had criticized her insistence that, when things were going wrong in his life, she could help him.

  ‘And sometimes,’ continued Nancy, ‘trying to help doesn’t. You can make things worse by meddling.’

  ‘Am I meddling now? Is that all it is?’

  ‘There are things you can’t change.’

  ‘What are you saying? That our friendship’s over? I know it’s over. I just want to understand why.’

  ‘What more can I say? Perhaps there’s nothing else to understand.’

  A stab of pain hit Gaby between the eyes. ‘Do you mean we’re not even going to have the conversation?’

  ‘You mean, the all-night-weeping-and-shouting-and-baring-our-souls conversation?’

  ‘Yes, fuck it, that’s what I mean. Don’t sneer.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to –’

  ‘You did. So that’s it, is it? That’s your summing-up of what happened. “Perhaps there’s nothing else to understand.” I’ll leave and nothing will be any different, nothing will have changed. I want to understand!’

  ‘Gaby –’

  ‘Don’t “Gaby” me in that patient voice.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No.’ Gaby sighed. ‘It’s me. I’m overwrought. I hear myself sometimes and am appalled.’

  ‘Do you want some more wine?’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t.’

  ‘I’ll make us some tea, then, shall I?’

  ‘I said shouldn’t, not wouldn’t – but go on, then, tea would be good.’

  ‘What does Connor think about your being here?’ asked Nancy, as she filled the kettle with water and set it on the hob.

  ‘He doesn’t know. He’s on a boat in the middle of the Channel with Stefan. It’s Stefan’s boat and they’re sailing it back from France. They do it every year. They’ll arrive in Southampton tomorrow, but he won’t be back till Monday because they need to put the boat to bed for the winter. That’s more information than you need, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s OK. So they sail together?’

  ‘Yes. He’ll probably think I’m daft when I tell him.’ Gaby watched from the sofa as Nancy poured the water over the tea-bags. The anger had drained away again. She felt quite peaceful and mildly detached, and the heat of the fire was making her sleepy.

  ‘What do you do?’ she asked.

  ‘Me? I’m head teacher at a primary school near here.’

  ‘But you were training to be a lawyer!’

  ‘I began again, didn’t I? It seemed more worthwhile. What about you?’

  ‘Oh, me. This and that. I’ve never really settled on one thing. And then after Ethan was born, I took lots of time off, what with one thing and another. Well, that was when you were still around, wasn’t it, so you remember all that? It was a miserable period. It took me a long time to realize how shocking it was. And then the miscarriages. Everything got a bit scrambled. I’ve ended up by doing lots of things not very well. At the moment I work for this little company – more like a one-man show than a company – that puts together cultural holidays for people from abroad. Mostly they’re American, but not always. You know, Stratford and a couple of Shakespeare plays, London and several more plays, plus art galleries and maybe a literary walk or two. I like it, but I’m not very organized. I’ve made terrible mistakes. I’m OK at the creative and social side – maybe that’s why Gil’s kept me on. I decide what a group should see and I try to arrange for them to meet directors or actors. So you could say that I’m kind of working with the theatre, like I used to say I wanted to when I was eleven, though it never occurred to me then that saying and doing were entirely different things. I certainly get to see lots of plays.’

  ‘You always did.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nancy handed her a mug of tea. Gaby sat up straighter and wrapped both her hands round it.

  ‘And Connor?’

  She took a sip. ‘Connor’s still a doctor, of course. Obsessively so. He’s a pain specialist. It’s a big new area and he’s one of the experts. Actually, he’s the director of a pain clinic that’s just been set up in central London.’

  ‘The science of suffering,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so – except it’s not as simple as a science, that’s what’s so fascinating about it. Pain’s in the brain. It’s very subjective. He’s been involved in this survey which shows that if you tell one group of volunteers their pain is moderate, and the other group that it’s severe, the moderate group will actually feel significantly less pain – you can tell it by the pattern in their brain. Isn’t that weird? That’s one side of it, and the other is very literal, trying to help patients who suffer terrible pain, sometimes for years, decades. He works with torture victims. He sees terrible things. The stories he tells me – you know, you could go mad thinking about all the cruelty in the world. The work he does makes what I do feel frivolous, stupid.’

  ‘We can’t all work with torture victims.’

  ‘I know that, of course.’

  ‘There’s a little boy in my school. His name’s Ari, and he comes from Chechnya. His parents claimed asylum here but his two brothers are still in Chechnya, if they’re alive. When he first arrived, he didn’t speak. Not a single word, no matter how hard we tried to draw him out. He has the most touching face, with enormous eyes that stare at you. It was weeks before he even said, “Hello,” or uttered his name. At break he would simply stand in one corner of the playground with his arms folded across his body and not move – it didn’t matter if it was freezing or raining. He was always perfectly polite. I often wonder what he’s seen, what he’s carrying inside him. A few months ago, he was on a school trip and it was night. He was staring up at the stars and the moon, and he suddenly said, “It’s the same moon and the same stars as in my country.” That seemed to make him happy.’

  ‘How heartrending,’ said Gaby. She thought: It’s been nineteen years since I had a conversation with Nancy Belmont.

  ‘It’s late,’ said Nancy, ‘and I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted. I assume you’re staying the night?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.’ She looked at her watch and saw it was one o’clock. She’d had almost no sleep since the night before last. ‘I hope Ethan’s all right,’ she said, and imagining her son alone in his little room, surrounded by his scattered possessions, made her eyes fill with tears again. ‘There was this woman, she was married to a famous musician but I can’t remember his name now. When her children had finally left home she drove to a bridge somewhere, gave her car keys to a couple of teenagers, poor things, and jumped off. Just like that. I guess she didn’t know who she was now that she wasn’t needed as a mother.’

  ‘Probably better to track me down in the middle of the night and shout at me, then.’

  ‘Probably.’

  They smiled at each other properly for the first time.

  ‘I’ll show you where your room is. Do you want a toothbrush? I always keep those travel ones they give you on long flights for times like this – not that I’ve had many times quite like this before.’

  ‘That’d be great.’ Gaby gestured at her bag. ‘As you can see, I’m travelling light. I don’t even have any keys.’

  ‘This way. The stairs are rather steep so mind you don’t slip.’

  Nancy led Gaby to a small room with a sloping roof. The bed was under the window, with a small table next to the pillow, a bedside lamp that cast a pool of light when Nancy switched it on. On the opposite wall a single shelf was stacked with books on education, and lined up on the floor underneath were shoes – two pairs of walking-boots, one relatively new, the other split and scuffed, espadrilles, trainers and a pair of grey suede clogs. Next to them were two
large cardboard boxes and a filing cabinet.

  ‘I’ll get you a towel. The bathroom’s next door – you have to wrench the hot tap a bit to get it working.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sleep well, then.’

  ‘You too.’

  Nancy pulled the door shut and Gaby was left alone. She sat down on the bed and closed her eyes. Her head spun in a kaleidoscope of images and thoughts, and she couldn’t distinguish between misery and excitement, frustration and a certain sense of triumph that at least she had got here. She didn’t know if she was glad to be sitting on this bed, in this strange room, in the middle of the night, or if she longed to be at home.

  She took her mobile out of her bag and rang Connor. She knew he wouldn’t answer – he was out of range, sitting on a boat somewhere. But at least she would hear his voice telling her that he couldn’t take her call.

  ‘Connor,’ she said, to the voicemail. ‘It’s me. Everything went fine today.’ She thought of the car wrecked in the garage, herself with Nancy in a remote village in Cornwall. ‘More or less,’ she added feebly. ‘I’ll talk to you when you get back. I just wanted to say that I’m thinking of you. Oh, and if you call me when you get in to Southampton, I probably won’t be at home, but don’t worry, I’ll speak to you soon. Take care.’ She turned off her mobile, which was running out of battery, and stood up.

  After cleaning her teeth and washing her face, she came back into the room and took all her clothes off, leaving them in a heap on the floor. The curtains were open and the patch of sky was quite dark. Gaby could see her naked reflection, and for an instant she had the impression that she was staring at someone else. She pulled the curtains shut and climbed into bed. The sheet was cold against her skin, and she huddled under the light duvet, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms round herself. She stared out into the bare room. Then she reached out and turned off the bedside lamp.

  In London, it was never completely dark and never completely quiet. Here, the thickness of the darkness felt like a heavy blanket that had been thrown over her. Gaby strained her eyes, trying to pull a shape out of the inky void, a lighter shade of black. Nothing. She closed her eyes tight for a few seconds, then opened them again. There was no change. This is what it is to be blind, she thought. And deaf. No owl cry, no cat call, no car in the distance reassuring her that she hadn’t fallen off the edge of the world. She couldn’t even hear the wind in the trees. She could only hear herself breathing. She closed her eyes once more and waited for sleep to come for her.