You Were Gone

by Tim Weaver

  Neither door would budge.

  I switched my attention back to the living room, my heart starting to race. I thought about what McMillan had said at the hospital, about the condition he claimed I had; I thought about Derryn’s sign that I’d sworn I’d left hanging from the back gate, but which I’d actually left in the garage; I thought about seeing someone out in the darkness of the alley when, in reality, no one was there; and then this – waking up with no idea how I’d got home, no clothes in my drawers, doors that shouldn’t be locked, and a woman in the kitchen, calling me for lunch, who sounded exactly like my dead wife.

  Was this a hallucination?

  I moved forward, McMillan’s words like an echo behind the thump of my head: If you’re suffering headaches, if you’re blacking out, if you refuse to recognize that your wife is alive and well, these are warning signs. What if he hadn’t drugged me?

  What if I was in the middle of a breakdown?

  At the door to the living room, I stopped again, looking left and right. The curtains had been drawn together most of the way, light cutting through in a thin block, just the same as in the bedroom. It was tidy, much tidier than I remembered leaving it; much tidier than I remembered it ever having been. It had been hoovered, dusted down. There was the smell of polish in the air, mixing with the scent of roasted meat and potatoes coming from the kitchen.

  The living-room table had been set for two.

  Two pairs of knives and forks. Two spoons. Two wine glasses. One bottle of red wine, already uncorked. A candle, unlit, and a present, in wrapping paper, next to one of the settings. On top of the present was a label, attached to a ribbon, with D on it.

  ‘Here we go, then.’

  She emerged from the kitchen. She was in a knee-length floral dress, a cardigan, and had her hair up in a bun. There was a light dusting of make-up on her cheeks, around her eyes, a hint of pale pink lipstick too. She was barefoot and smiling, and didn’t look at me when she entered, as if this – her, me, this house, this dinner – was nothing out of the ordinary; just a wife cooking a meal for her husband.

  She put a bowl of roast potatoes down and then returned to the kitchen. In my ears, my pulse was pounding so hard it was like my skin was vibrating. I watched her come back again with another bowl, this one segmented, each of its parts filled with a different type of vegetable. She looked up at me briefly, still smiling, but once she put the bowl down, a frown formed, as if she’d only just noted the confusion on my face.

  ‘How are you feeling, sweetheart?’

  I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t form.

  ‘I know you’re not feeling well,’ she said, ‘but it’s so lovely to spend time with you like this. You’re so busy with work that we don’t often get the chance, do we?’

  I looked at the table, steam rising off the food, then at the place settings, the glasses, the gift – wrapped and waiting for me.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

  When my eyes returned to her, she’d come even closer, and I could detect Derryn’s perfume. I would never forget the scent, because it had been on the clothes of hers I’d held in the months after she died. Once, a few months after the funeral, I suddenly started crying in the beauty section of a department store when I smelled it in the air.

  ‘How did you get into my house?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How did I get home last night?’

  Her expression was that of someone who thought this might be a joke that she just wasn’t getting. From the kitchen, the timer on the oven sounded, beeping gently.

  ‘That’s the lamb,’ she said.

  ‘What are you doing? What’s going on?’

  ‘What does it look like?’ she replied softly. ‘I’m making you a meal. I’ve opened a bottle of wine and I’ve got you a little present for your birthday. It’s not much – I know we’re saving up for a new kitchen at the moment, but –’

  ‘It’s not my birthday.’

  That seemed to throw her. ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘My birthday is in July.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘the 14th of July.’

  ‘We’re in December.’

  A smile skirted her lips, waiting for the punchline that wasn’t coming. ‘Okay,’ she said, waving me away, her gaze switching back to the table, to the food that was waiting. ‘You win, funny man.’

  ‘Win? What do you mean?’

  She smiled again, her eyes flashing, even in the subdued light. ‘I mean, I get it,’ she said. ‘You’re in denial about your age, and that means ignoring your birthdays.’

  She picked up the present and handed it to me.

  ‘Open it,’ she said.

  I looked at the gift, then at her.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Open it.’

  Reluctantly, I took it from her, looking at her again, along the hallway towards the kitchen, breathing in the smell of the house for a second time. Was this what it had smelled like when she’d been alive? The smell of good food, of clean surfaces, of a house that was cherished?

  ‘Open it,’ she repeated.

  I looked down at the present, at the ribbon, at the label with D on it – the handwriting clean and elegant, just as I remembered Derryn’s being – and then tore the paper away. It was a book, a copy of No One Can See the Crows at Night, different from the one she’d always kept by her bed, different too from the one I’d found in the loft.

  ‘You said you wanted to read it,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Of course you did. You’ve been saying it for months. You said you liked the sound of the storyline.’

  The spouse who might be a stranger.

  The impostor.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she replied, winking. Was this all a game to her or did she actually have no idea what the significance of the book was? I’d never said I wanted to read it. I’d never told Derryn that. Except I had to stop myself: this isn’t Derryn.

  Is it?

  She headed back into the kitchen.

  As I stood there, I zeroed in on the wall clock, hung above the TV cabinet: the one Derryn had bought when we’d spent a weekend in Bristol. Painted on the face was a triskelion, a motif with three interlocking spirals. Beneath that, in panels at the bottom, were readouts for the day and month.

  It said it was 14 July.

  My birthday.

  She returned with some Yorkshire puddings.

  ‘There we go,’ she said, setting them down.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’

  She glanced at me. ‘What? Are you talking about the Yorkshires? Don’t tell me that, now you’re a year older, you’ve decided to start watching your weight?’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  A pause. ‘Get in?’

  ‘How did you get into the house?’

  ‘Uh, I live here.’

  She came around the table towards me.

  ‘Are you …’ She stopped, looked bewildered. ‘Are you okay, D?’

  She put a hand to my arm and I pulled away.

  ‘David,’ she said. ‘Please. You’re starting to worry me.’

  ‘Has McMillan put you up to this?’

  ‘McMillan?’

  ‘Erik McMillan. Is he doing this?’

  She didn’t respond, and as I thought of McMillan, I thought about the coffee again. What had he put in it?

  Was that how all of this seemed so real?

  I looked around the living room. My head was agonizing, the pain like a ball of barbed wire behind my eyes, scratching and twisting and tearing. She reached out to me a second time and put her fingers on my arm, and I was so distracted that I didn’t notice it to start with, and by the time I did, she’d come all the way in, sliding her arms around me. Suddenly, she was embracing me, her head just below my chin.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

  ‘I’m cuddling you.’

  ‘No.
I mean, what are you doing here?’

  She looked up at me. ‘Everything’s all right.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, it’s –’

  ‘Everything’s all right,’ she said again and gave me a gentle squeeze. ‘You need to relax. Things have been stressful for you. But you’re home now. You’re with me.’

  ‘How did I get back?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘How did I get back from the hospital?’

  ‘You weren’t at any hospital,’ she said.

  ‘I was with McMillan.’

  ‘No, sweetheart.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘No, you were here. You’ve always been here.’

  You’ve always been here.

  I thought of the red door, my memory of it.

  ‘Why can I remember a door?’ I said.

  ‘A door?’

  ‘A red door. What does it mean?’

  She didn’t answer.

  I could smell her perfume again, could smell the shampoo in her hair, felt her skin against mine, and my eyes began to well up. I didn’t want to cry, wanted to push her away, wanted to blink and wake up and find myself at the end of a nightmare I’d finally dragged myself out of. But I didn’t. I stood there, her arms around me, her face against the top of my chest, and it was like time had folded over, one point connecting to another: the sensation of her against me – her physicality, the smell of her, her size and weight, her substance – took me all the way back, across eight long years of grief and mourning and agony. For a few seconds more, a part of me railed against the idea it could ever be her – I felt my teeth grit and my muscles tense, heard a voice telling me, It’s not her it’s not her it’s not her – but then the fight started to fade, and the voice did too, and all that was left behind was the ache of my head, my body and my heart. She squeezed me again, told me she loved me, said it over and over, and this time I closed my eyes, raised my arms and took hold of her.

  And just for a minute, I pretended.

  I pretended she’d never died. I pretended my life had never changed that day, never cracked, never shattered into millions of pieces I was never able to put back together again. Just for a minute, I gave in and accepted what I was being told. I was sick. This was real.

  This was my wife.

  This was Derryn.

  33

  I followed her into the kitchen, waiting in the doorway as she flipped the oven open and, using a pair of gloves, slid the joint out on a roasting pan. It crackled and popped and the aroma of it began to disguise the smell of her perfume.

  ‘Why are all the blinds shut?’ I asked.

  Through the frosted glass of the kitchen door, all I could see was light, sun arcing on to the driveway at the side of the house. As she set the roasting tray down, she said, ‘I thought it would be better for you, especially because you’ve been having such terrible migraines. Keeping the house dark helps, plus it’s more romantic.’

  She flashed me a smile.

  ‘Go and sit down,’ she said. ‘I’ll sort this out.’

  The pounding in my head was so bad now, white spots were flashing in front of my eyes, so I moved from the kitchen back into the living room, dragged a chair out from the table and collapsed into it. As I sat there, eyes closed, trying to make sense of it – of any of it – I listened to the house creak in the sunlight, to the low hum of the oven, a soft, repetitive timbre that slowly started to make me drift.

  The further I drifted, the less I could hear.

  Then there was silence.

  When I woke up, I was on the sofa. My clothes felt damp, sweated through, my head was sore – no longer pounding; almost bruised – and the television was playing, the sound on mute. It was showing an old repeat of a British detective series.

  Gingerly, I sat up and then looked towards the living-room table. It was still set, slices of lamb laid out on otherwise empty plates, and while the food was still piled into bowls in the centre, there was no steam coming from it. It was cold; none of it had been touched.

  I got up, swaying for a moment. I heard the same low hum of the oven in the kitchen, and the sound of birds in the garden. And something else from the bedroom.

  Sobbing.

  I left the living room and headed down the hallway. The spare bedroom and office doors were still closed, and the air was starting to feel dry, the house airless. At the door to the bedroom, I found her sitting with her back to me on the edge of the bed. In a mirror directly across the room, I could see more of her, a reflection of a woman whose hair had begun escaping the bun, falling past her face in long, pale strands. Her face was red from tears, blotchy and raw, and her fingers were clutching a piece of kitchen towel, folded quarter-sized, which she’d been using as a tissue. She clocked my movement at the door and glanced over her shoulder. Her gaze stayed on me for a while, and then she dropped her head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, feeling a pang of sympathy for her.

  She looked at me again. The blue-green of her eyes flashed with more tears and I could see deep red blood vessels jagging out from her irises, like forks of lightning.

  Quietly, she said, ‘I don’t want you to be ill.’

  ‘I’m not ill.’

  She just stared at me, as if to say, Come on, be serious. I thought about the clothes of hers I’d found in the wardrobe, the locked doors I couldn’t open; I thought of sitting down at the table, blacking out and waking up on the sofa.

  ‘Where are the rest of my clothes?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where are the rest of my clothes?’

  She was frowning again, using the kitchen towel to dab at her nose. When she saw that it was a genuine question, she pushed herself up off the bed and went to the wardrobe, opening it. Inside were the clothes – hers, mine – I’d found earlier. But now there were more: the hangers on my side were full up with shirts and trousers, jackets, sweaters, and all of them belonged to me.

  I stepped further into the room. ‘They weren’t there before,’ I said, and took another step, then another, opening up the chest of drawers. They were divided up: drawers for her, drawers for me, mine full of underwear and socks and running gear.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said.

  ‘You’re sick, D.’

  I shook my head, eyes still on my clothes.

  ‘You are. You’re sick.’

  I looked at her, then out at the room.

  ‘I thought you’d got better, but you haven’t.’

  ‘I’m not sick.’

  ‘Is this why you get so … so angry sometimes?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You don’t need to be embarrassed. I can help you.’ I could hear birds out in the garden. ‘I love you, David. I’ve always loved you. I will always love you, but you know we can’t go on like this. You asking me all these weird questions. “What am I doing? How did I get into the house? Where are my clothes?” Some days, it’s not your fists that hurt me. It’s your words that hurt more.’

  I looked at her and, somewhere in the fuzz of my head, I remembered watching her on a monitor in Charing Cross police station when she’d implied I was violent.

  ‘I’ve never hurt you.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’ve never hurt you,’ I said again, and then caught myself: I was treating her as if she were my wife. I was talking to her like she was Derryn. I stayed where I was and studied her face, looking for the things that weren’t the same, and I saw again all the differences – the subtle disparity in the colour of her eyes; the way her nose didn’t run quite as straight as Derryn’s; the thinness of her lips – and I said, ‘You’re not Derryn.’

  She looked bereft.

  ‘You’re the one that’s sick,’ I said. ‘Let me help you.’

  She nodded, wiping at her eyes, her nose, looking around the bedroom at the pictures of Derryn and me, and then she started to cry again. I didn’t know what to do.

  Quietly,
she said something.

  ‘What was that?’ I asked her.

  I took a step closer.

  ‘What did you say?’

  She looked up at me.

  I dropped to my haunches in front of her.

  ‘I can help you,’ I said again. ‘Let me help you.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I can.’

  She shook her head a second time.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Let me help you.’

  ‘No. I don’t even recognize you.’

  My head began pounding again, the sensation so sharp and so sudden, I had to reach out for the bed, feel for it, and guide myself on to the mattress. I lay there, legs dangling off the side, trying to regain my composure, my sense of balance, my grip on reality. But none of it would come. If anything, I began to feel worse, the blackness behind my eyelids offering no comfort at all: my skull was on fire, front to back. It was swimming; I felt like I was on a boat being thumped by waves, far out into the ocean.

  The sounds began to drift first.

  I could hear her asking me if I was all right, over and over, her hand on my arm. I heard her telling me she would call an ambulance. I tried to respond, wasn’t sure if I actually had, and then I heard her telling me she was going to phone 999.

  The creak of the mattress as I slumped sideways.

  The thump of her footsteps as she left the bedroom.

  And then there was nothing.

  #0701

  After I left hospital, I didn’t see you again for two weeks, but I thought about you all the time. I remembered that smile of yours. I remembered how, when I was still recovering on the ward, you’d bring me water in the morning and always pour the first cup for me. None of the other nurses did that. That was why everyone – all the patients, I mean – liked you the best, because you took care of the small things as well as the big stuff. You’d puff up our pillows, make sure we had enough blankets; you’d pretend to be a drill sergeant in order to get us to eat that terrible food; you’d come around at night and talk to us, every one of us, your voice soft and calming, especially when you were talking to me.