The Moment You Were Gone (15 page)

He himself had never experienced severe, or even moderate, physical pain. He'd torn a ligament when skiing, sliced open a finger cutting up vegetables, had wisdom teeth removed, suffered hangovers and sore throats, ached for a while with flu. But the kind of hurt that he witnessed as a doctor every day was utterly unfamiliar and unimaginable to him, a foreign land that he knew, one day, he would probably have to visit. When he'd watched Gaby in labour, he'd been horrified by her howls and screams and ferocious obscenities (Gaby hadn't even tried to hold back: she'd been stupendously uninhibited in her public demonstration of pain), by the way she'd writhed and thrashed on the bed like a landed fish, and
most of all by the way her face, which he'd thought he had seen in every shifting mood, had become unfamiliar to him, her mouth drawn back over her teeth in a snarl.

‘I'll go and get the steak in a minute,' he said.

‘What about pain that isn't physical?' asked Stefan, suddenly, turning towards him.

‘Ah, now.'

‘What you're saying – well, can you say the same about that?'

‘I don't know,' said Connor. He stood up and brushed crumbs from his clothes. ‘I'm a doctor not a priest.'

Where on earth was she? She struggled up to a sitting position and blinked in the shafts of light that slanted through the window. For a moment, everything was a bleached-out dazzle, which gradually took shape. A bed, photographs, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers; through the window, a stone wall, grass, small thorny trees and a distant sea. She'd been sleeping with one hand under her head and now pins-and-needles were tingling through it. She rubbed her fingers together, then swung her feet to the floor and stood up, face creased, dazed, a stale taste in her mouth, staggering like a jet-lagged passenger emerging into a new temporal zone.

In the bathroom, she discovered that Nancy had already thrown her disposable toothbrush into the bin, cleaning her away as soon as she had left. Gaby retrieved it, brushed her teeth vigorously, dropped it back into the bin and splashed cold water over her face. Only then did she look at her watch, squinting to make sure she wasn't mistaken. It was nearly half past two: she'd been fast asleep on Nancy's bed for hours. Indeed, she saw now that, outside, the sun had moved across the sky and was already quite low and yellow as a yolk, sending its long fingers across the moors, filtering softly through the trees. Gaby fumbled for her mobile and scrolled down her address book to the number for National Rail Enquiries.
She asked for trains from Liskeard to London, this after-noon, and was told that there were no further trains that day because of works on the line. What about a replacement bus service? she asked. There was one to Plymouth but it had left twenty minutes ago. The next train from Liskeard to London was the following morning.

Gaby stood becalmed at the top of the stairs, wondering what to do – although she already knew, even as she knew that she shouldn't, she mustn't. She would stay here, in Nancy's house. She would sleep in the spare room and make sure the duvet was pulled back exactly as it had been. She would buy supplies from the shop in the village, assuming it was still open at this time on a Sunday, then clear away the meal, replacing everything neatly, rubbing away any tiny stains. She would leave no trace and tomorrow she'd sneak out of the front door, lock it and leave the key under the boulder. No one would ever know. It would be her secret night, shut away inside herself.

The first thing to do was to buy food, for she was already ravenous and she didn't want to raid Nancy's cupboards. She found her jacket hanging in the hall downstairs and then, feeling chilly, she pulled one of Nancy's coats over the top, and pocketed the key and her wallet. She slipped out of the house like a thief, casting nervous glances around her, and walked briskly back to the centre of Rashmoor, past the pub and the antiques shop, to the grocery and off-licence she'd noticed last night. It was surprisingly well stocked for a village shop, with fresh vegetables and locally baked bread, and was still open,
although the woman behind the counter was packing things up and while Gaby was still inside turned the ‘open' sign to ‘closed'. Gaby bought a wholemeal baguette, four tomatoes, a packet of ham, some Cornish cheese, a small jar of instant coffee, a half-litre of milk and a bottle of red wine. As she was about to leave, she turned back for ten Silk Cut and a box of matches.

As she walked up the lane, a few leaves spun slowly through the air towards her. She held out a hand and caught one for luck. She wanted it to be evening, so that she could sit in the small house with her picnic and her wine, and look out at the darkening landscape and the stars becoming visible, one by one. But it was barely three o'clock and she felt fidgety and full of unsatisfied energy. She went out into the garden, where the bonfire from last night was still smoking and giving off heat, and smoked the first of her cigarettes. The rush of dizziness pleased her, and she leant against the apple tree pulling smoke into her lungs and gazing out at the sea in the distance. She wanted to be in those waves, salt water in her eyes, gasping with the cold and facing out to nothingness.

Before she had time to change her mind, she went back into the house and found Nancy's swimsuit and her towel, still damp, hanging above the boiler. The bike was in the lean-to at the back of the house, and she rolled the costume into the towel, pushed it into the basket. Through the gate, and having put the key to the front door under the stone, she hoicked her skirt up and was off, wobbling over tree roots and boulders. She didn't really know where she was going, simply headed for the
sea, which disappeared from view as she went down a steep hill, then re-emerged, glinting in the sun. Eventually, she dismounted and pushed the bike over a recently ploughed field, the mud sticking heavily to her sandals, and left it leaning by the fence, which she climbed over, tearing her skirt and stinging her calf on a nettle as she did so. But there at last was the sea, down a steep, rocky bank, through vicious thornbushes, which grabbed at her hair and snagged her shirt, then on to a crop of land between two rocky stretches, too gritty and small to be called a beach. Waves slapped the shoreline, leaving a crooked necklace of seaweed in their wake.

There was no one to see her. Gaby tugged off her clothes, hearing a button pop and her skirt rip even more. Her skin was pale and covered with goosebumps and the churning sea looked inhospitable, the rocks on either side menacing. But she reminded herself that this was what Nancy did every morning and strode towards the water's edge, wincing as sharp stones pressed into her soles and giving a small shriek as the first wave curled over her foot, then sucked back. A few paces more and she was up to her thighs, giving ineffectual hops every time a wave threatened to break over her, crossing her arms over her chest to shield her breasts.

‘After the count of three,' she instructed herself. ‘One, two, three …' But still she didn't submerge herself and start to swim until she lost her footing and sank, eyes stinging and choking on a mouthful of water. She thrashed back to the surface and saw that the undertow was already pulling her strongly towards the rocks. She flailed her arms in an approximation of the crawl, but she
was a weak swimmer, a sunny-day floater in summer shallows, and now the sea was pulling at her and she could feel the colder current under her feet.

She tried to stand and found that she was out of her depth already. She turned to face the shore, although the sun in her eyes made it hard to see. There was the small disc of the beach, and there were her clothes in a tumbled heap. There was the slope she had struggled and slipped her way down, before a nasty little wave tossed itself into her face, into her stinging eyes. She spluttered and swallowed more water, struck out blindly.

Swimming lessons at school: other girls with their streamlined bodies and slick black swimming caps, arms raised, hands together, entering the water with never a splash, just a neat hole that opened at the touch of their steepled fingers and closed in on itself as their pressed-together feet dissolved from sight. And then they were the flickering, subterranean figures shifting along the floor of the pool; shape-changers, underwater birds. While she – hair cascading loose from the pinching cap and fingers wide open, as she had been told they should never be, her flesh soft and full, mouth open in a silent laugh of embarrassment at her own clumsiness – would go in, limbs flying apart and silver leaps of water all around her, then the sudden turquoise silence of the underwater world. If she had tried harder then, she wouldn't be in this pickle now.

Now she closed her fingers, pulled at the swirling water and kicked her legs. Connor would be on the deck, holding heavy coils of rope, gathering heaps of sail into the bags. Ethan – where would Ethan be? Was anybody
thinking of her right now? The sun was a yellow orb dangling inside her skull and the sky a metal sheet shimmering above her; the waves tipped and chucked her. For a moment, she thought that she would die out there and no one would ever find her, or even know where to look. Not waving but drowning. Then her feet scrabbled on the bottom and she was standing up, up to her waist. Below her waist, even – she could have stood before. She'd been splashing around in a frantic panic when the ground was beneath her feet. She gave a sobbing cough and waded against the tug of the tide up the shore, half falling, then stumbling on. She reached the pile of her clothes and turned to look back at the sea. The waves were small, the rocks mild, and it seemed so tame and easy.

She wrapped Nancy's towel round her and stood, her limbs trembling with cold and shock, her teeth chattering. Then she rubbed herself dry, wincing as sand scoured her skin. She wrung out her hair and wrapped it, turban-like, in the towel. The sea had come in far enough to douse her clothes with spray, so that they were now wet and sandy. It was difficult to pull them on over her chilly, damp flesh, and the sandal straps rubbed against her gritty, blistered feet. This hadn't been such a good idea, after all. Yet it had looked so beautiful from a distance, green-blue, welcoming and still.

Gaby's skirt tore further on the bike ride home, when the hem caught in the bike chain. Her hair lashed her cheeks. Water dribbled down her neck. She was thankful when she arrived at the house and, with numb fingers, unlocked the door. She put the key under the boulder,
for she wouldn't need it again before she left in the morning, then squelched into the hall, leaving a watery trail behind her. She kicked off her sandals, then made her way upstairs to the spare bedroom, got undressed and wrapped herself in the dressing-gown she had used before. Next, she rinsed all her clothes and hung them over the boiler with the swimsuit and towel. She turned the hot water on at the immersion heater, boiled the kettle and poured water over a herbal tea-bag, then ran herself a deep bath, adding plenty of lavender bath foam.

Oh, but it was lovely. She held her nose and slid under the surface, staying there for as long as she could manage. This was her kind of water, hot and fragrant, making the tips of her fingers shrivel. She could stay there until it got dark, turning the tap with her big toe when the water cooled, watching day turn to evening out of the window, letting her flesh melt …

Later, she wouldn't be able to remember what came next: it was simply a kaleidoscope of memories and feelings that glittered in her mind, forever rearranging itself into a different pattern. Did she have a glass of the shiraz, or was that after she had opened the first cardboard box in the spare bedroom and pulled out envelopes, folders of bank statements and bills, bundles of letters – all carefully ordered, some labelled and dated? Did she sit in the garden with a cigarette, watching the smoke coil into the air and dissipate while the stars hung low in the sky, or did she leaf through the photographs, one by one? There were so many, an album of a life thus far, and there's something powerfully emotional about seeing a familiar
face grow older under your fingers. Older, and perhaps less happy, or was that just what happened to a face as it left youth behind and gathered up the years in the creases round the eyes and the brackets round the mouth? Photographs of Nancy with her father, with her mother, with other tiny children – cousins, perhaps, though Nancy had never mentioned cousins – and with other, unfamiliar, adults.

It was with a jolt that left her breathless that Gaby was suddenly looking at her own life as well, her own face getting older: for there she was with Nancy, and Cindy Sheringham, sitting on the swings in the playground behind her old house. And there she was again, arm in arm with Nancy, in shorts and a T-shirt, and for a moment she was in Brighton again, on that day long ago. And again, a few photos later, she was with Nancy and with Gaby's entire family – her mother partly obscured by an enormous brimmed hat that made her look like a gangster, her father blurred, and her three brothers tall and grinning in front of them. Stefan, Antony and Max. How young they all were then, how hopeful and boyish. Now Max was a banker, Antony sold cars and Stefan taught history at a university and never wore matching socks. As for Nancy, she stood very straight, her chin up in the pose Gaby knew so well, and stared intently at whoever had been taking the photograph. Then they were teenagers, their lips were red and they had earrings in their lobes and a more knowing way of posing for the camera. Gaby could hardly bear to look at some of the pictures, for they brought memories flooding back so strongly that she felt they might choke her. Ah, here was Stefan again – and no
longer just one of Gaby's brothers but Nancy's boyfriend. Gaby knew that many of the photographs had been taken by Nancy; she even remembered her doing so – even thought she could hear the click of the button as she depressed it. And gradually she saw how she slid out of the pictures, or was on the sidelines. It was Stefan – at that twenty-first birthday party, in a suit, in swimming-trunks, at graduation, holding a bottle of champagne, sitting at a table outside a café in some foreign town, even out of focus on a bike. Every so often it was Stefan and Nancy in a group or posing together: an official couple, holding hands or smiling towards each other. And studying them, one after another, Gaby saw how in several of the photographs Nancy was looking at the camera, head lifted and gaze steady, while Stefan was turned towards her. It was two decades ago, but Gaby could see the contentment in his face. He felt safe. Even now it hurt to see it, knowing how it had ended.