The Moment You Were Gone (36 page)

‘Fine.'

‘And then we can talk, Gaby.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm serious. We need to talk. I'll tell you about today, of course, I'll answer any questions. But it's more than that. This has come between us like a wedge. No, listen, you've been extraordinary. You couldn't have reacted with more generosity or honesty. Yet it feels to me that we're standing together in a cold shadow. That's the only way I can think to put it.'

‘It's a good way to put it,' said Gaby, gently.

‘It makes me understand how happy I've been with you.'

‘And I with you.'

‘This sounds horribly like an elegy for something lost. We mustn't lose it, Gaby. We have to get it back – oh, I know, of course, that nothing can be exactly the same. We can't swallow a forgetting-pill to erase the knowledge we both now have. Though to be absolutely honest, there have been times over the years when I did almost forget what I'd done. It seemed to have happened to a different person. Not me. I know that sounds like a way of forgiving myself. I don't mean it like that.'

‘Sonia makes it impossible for that to happen again, doesn't it?'

‘Yes. Of course. Sonia.'

‘Shall we start with her?'

‘Do you want a glass of wine?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Right.'

They sat opposite each other at the table. Connor
looked down at his hands as he talked. ‘We didn't meet for very long. An hour or so. We went and had coffee in the café near the hospital. You know the one.'

‘I know.'

‘She was a bit late – or I was a bit early. She wanted first of all to know about –'

‘No. What did she look like?'

‘You met her. You know what she looks like.'

‘I want to know what she looks like to
you
. What you felt like when you met her, your first thoughts and impressions.'

‘Oh.' Connor paused, then said softly, ‘She's lovely.'

Gaby felt as though someone had taken her heart and squeezed it brutally in their fist, but she kept her eyes steadily on Connor's averted face.

‘Lovely to look at and just – well … lovely. Young and bright and full of curiosity about things. Half the time we talked about my work. She wants to study science. She's obviously very clever, but also she's got this real intellectual hunger, as if she's been half starved for years. In that way she reminded me of –' He stopped.

‘Of you.'

‘I was going to say that, yes.'

‘You felt proud of her.'

Connor looked at his wife. His face twisted in pity. ‘I suppose I did.'

‘Of your daughter.'

‘She's not my daughter. She was very clear about that.

It was pretty much the first thing she said. She's not my daughter and I'm not her father. I'm her genetic donor.'

‘Yes.'

‘Gaby, you asked me and I told you.'

‘Right. So – what did she ask you?'

‘She had a list of questions written out. It was somewhat disconcerting. For example, she wanted to know about illnesses, genetic predispositions, things like that. I told her about my father's cancer, and the pre-cancerous growths in my intestine a few years ago, and about my mother's alcoholism. And I mentioned that I had a mild tendency to depression that I kept at bay by running. It was all remarkably dispassionate.'

‘What else?'

‘Um – she said did I realize how like each other we were.'

‘And you did?'

‘Yes. We even have the same way of –'

‘I know.'

‘Of course. And she asked about how it happened.'

‘Between you and Nancy?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you told her.'

‘But nothing I haven't already told you. She wanted to know if I'd ever suspected she existed. She was confirming Nancy's story for herself, I suppose.'

‘Mm.'

‘She asked about Ethan. She wants to meet him.'

‘Of course she does.'

‘She seems genuinely delighted at the idea that she has a half-brother.'

‘What did you say?'

‘And I said I'd talk to my family about it.'

‘By your family you mean me and Ethan?'

‘Yes.'

‘Right. You've talked to me. I'm going to leave it to you to tell Ethan. I think that's best. You don't want me hovering round you.'

‘Gaby –'

‘It's fine. Maybe you could visit him, take him out for a meal or something.'

‘I was thinking of waiting until he came home.'

‘It's up to you. Shall we have that glass of wine now?'

‘Of course.'

He got to his feet and opened the bottle he'd put out earlier, then poured them half a glass each, clinked his glass against hers. ‘To us,' he said.

‘Did she ask about me?'

‘You?'

‘There's no reason she should have. I've probably never crossed her mind. But I wondered if she mentioned me at all.'

‘She said that she hoped this hadn't been destructive for me. That's a way of asking about you, after a fashion.'

‘Hmm. And what did you ask her?'

‘Oh. If she felt that this whole experience had helped her come to terms with her background, things like that,' said Connor, vaguely.

‘What else?'

‘Well, she wanted to know if we would meet again and I said I was sure that we would before long.'

‘What does that mean, before long?'

‘I don't know. Before next year.'

‘That soon! I see.'

‘Not that soon – a few weeks …'

‘I see,' she repeated, and took another sip, frowning. ‘She's in your life, isn't she?'

‘I don't know, Gaby. Honestly, I don't know. But I won't do anything you don't want me to do, I promise you that.'

‘You're asking my permission?'

‘That's not how I would want to see it. I want to feel that we're in this strange situation together, making decisions as a partnership.'

‘We're not in it together, though, are we? Of course we're not. How can we be?'

‘Look, I know that's true in a way. What I'm saying now is that we have to find a way through this together.'

‘I know.'

‘So where do we begin?'

‘We begin with me going away.'

Connor gave a start, so that some of his wine splashed on to the table.

‘I need to step outside this hot little muddle we've made.'

‘Of course,' he said drearily. ‘When do you want to go?'

‘I thought – tomorrow?'

‘Tomorrow!'

‘Gil turns out to have a cottage on the Welsh borders I can use for as long as I want.'

‘But tomorrow?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're leaving me, aren't you?'

‘I don't know what I'm doing. But I have to go.'

It was one of those days when the darkness never lifts entirely, yet as she drove down the narrow lane under the tangled arch of bare trees, Gaby felt herself stirred with excitement. Snarling winds, a few vicious spits of rain, a grimly lowering sky: this was what she had come for, this heaving emptiness of green, sodden grey and churning brown, where she could be alone. She glanced down at the piece of paper containing Gilbert's precise directions, written in his beautiful italic hand. She had to turn left down a tarmacked track after a few miles on this road, so she did, over a hump-backed bridge, along a brackish stream, and as she rounded the corner and the tarmac turned to gravel and mud, she saw the cottage in front of her, half hidden by trees, half invisible in its slaty greyness.

Gilbert had not exaggerated. It was certainly remote. No other dwelling could be seen from here, unless you counted the ruined grey walls of what must once have been a sheep pen on the shallow hillside behind the cottage. And even from the outside, it looked run-down. The window-frames were rotting, the stonework in need of pointing; there was moss in the guttering and the windows were dirty and streaked with bird shit. Weeds grew high in the garden that ran down to the stream, so it was hard to make out the ancient rose bushes and shrubs. Yet it was a pretty house, low and grey, with
asymmetrical windows. On one side, stone steps climbed to a square wooden door that Gaby knew opened into the junk room and wood store. The rickety porch had a bench inside it, and ivy spread over the walls. Gaby could imagine the cottage restored, tended and lit up, smoke rising from the chimney – a little grey haven among the wild beauty that surrounded it.

She pulled to a halt outside, climbed out of the car and opened the boot. She had packed an old leather case with a sketch-pad and paints, but apart from that she had only brought the essentials: loo paper, bed linen and a towel, two thick Victorian novels, and a few clothes – an extra pair of jeans, a couple of shirts, a warm jersey, long scarf, thick socks, walking-boots, night-things, slippers and a fluorescent yellow waterproof with a peaked hood that would have looked more appropriate on a fisherman out in the North Sea. But when she had left, Connor had insisted on loading her up with provisions. He'd produced two bottles of red wine and one of white, with a corkscrew in case the house didn't have one; several vacuum-packed half-baked baguettes that kept for days and she could simply pop into the oven a few minutes before eating; a packet of smoked bacon and half a dozen eggs; a third of a tub of spreadable butter; a jar of marmalade he had made last year; a bag of green apples; a mango, ready to eat at once; a slab of his favourite chocolate; a portion of frozen vegetable lasagne that he'd found at the back of the freezer; half a litre of milk; porridge oats for her breakfast, and golden sugar to sprinkle over it; ground coffee; Assam tea and green tea; and finally an old hotwater bottle in case the cottage was cold. She'd protested
that there would be shops and cafés near enough, and that she was coming home soon anyway, but he had looked so eager, his arms full of food, that she had relented.

She picked up her case, bundled the sheet and duvet under her arm, then walked to the front door and fished out of her pocket the key Gilbert had given her. It took several goes to make it turn in the lock, and then the door stuck on the pile of envelopes and flyers that had been pushed through the letterbox. It was almost as cold inside as it was out, and the dank smell caught in her nostrils. She pushed her case indoors and went back to the car to collect the boxes of food. Then she looked around her. The front door opened directly into the sitting room, which had a couple of baggy, comfy sofas, a writing desk and a bookcase in it, as well as a wood-burning stove in the corner. It led directly into a kitchen of higgledy-piggledy cabinets and a tiny cooker; the window gave on to the patchworked hillside.

Gaby applied herself to Gilbert's instructions. She found the stopcock and turned it on, feeling absurdly proud when water gushed in orange-brown splashes out of the tap. She found the switch for electricity and turned that on too. Sure enough, light filled the rooms. She went out of the house and up the stone staircase at the side, unlocking and dragging open the warped wooden door and peering into a dark space, remembering only then that Gilbert had advised her to take a torch. But she could see logs piled along one wall, and she took as many as she could manage and brought them back into the house. She couldn't remember the last time she had made a fire;
Connor always did that. There was a pile of yellowing newspapers on the table and she scrunched several pages into tight balls and laid them at the bottom of the wood-burning stove. Now she needed kindling. The twigs and fallen branches outside were wet, but in a room leading off the kitchen – a kind of walk-in store room and larder, with two fishing rods leaning against the wall and whose shelves held a few mysterious tins and packets – she found a box of sticks clearly left there for the purpose. She arranged these in a neat roof across the paper.

There. Now she could light the fire – except she had no matches. None in her pockets, none in her bag, although she did have a packet of cigarettes bought at a petrol station on the way. There were none, it seemed, anywhere in the house – she opened drawers and ran up the steep, narrow staircase to see if a box might be hiding in one of the two bedrooms. Gaby cursed, blowing on her numbing fingers to warm them. Then she went back to the car, turned the key in the ignition and depressed the cigarette lighter. When it popped back up, she held it against a tight twist of paper until it caught light, and ran back to the house carrying it between cupped fingers. It went out as she reached the kitchen, so she returned to the car, and this time lit a cigarette, which she used to light one of the paper balls in the stove. Flames licked and caught; the sticks started to smoke. Gaby carefully laid three small logs in a wigwam round them. The flames dwindled and expired.

Twice more, she went through the whole process, watching the flames catch, then die. Surely it should be easier than this. If that stocky man on television could go
into icy wildernesses and light a bonfire by rubbing sticks together and coaxing flames out of wood shavings, surely she could get a wood-burning stove designed for the purpose to work. At last, nearly an hour later, a small fire was burning, but giving out no heat. The smoke wasn't going upwards either, but outwards, seeping through the stove's glass doors and filling the room. Gaby twiddled the handles at the bottom of the contraption, which she assumed must have something to do with directing the air flow, and the smoke became thicker, so she returned them to their original position and opened the doors to let the smoke billow into the room.

At least the cooker was a basic electric one, and the kettle was one you plugged in and turned on. She filled it with water and rummaged in the box for the tea-bags. There was a teapot in one of the cupboards with a chipped spout, and an unexpectedly beautiful tea-set – delicate cups and saucers in bone china. She went into the chilly sitting room with her tea and sat on one of the sofas, sipping it. It was four o'clock. The grey day was ending and the long evening stretched in front of her. She wasn't sure what to do with it and, filled with a need to talk to someone, she pulled her mobile from her pocket to call Stefan. But there was no signal here; no signal and no landline. If she wanted to talk to someone she would have to get into the car and drive somewhere. Briefly, she was filled with foreboding, and the sound of the wind clattering seemed menacing. Then she heaved herself out of the sagging sofa, closed the curtains in the kitchen and the living room and unpacked the box of provisions into various cupboards. She found that Connor had put in
two large boxes of matches and she thanked him silently, then went upstairs with her case and bed linen.

Of the bedrooms, one was large and carpeted, with a double bed, a tall wardrobe containing several blankets and pillows, a set of shelves lined with a motley collection of paperbacks. Its window overlooked the driveway. The other was much smaller and plainer, with whitewashed walls, unvarnished wooden floorboards, a threadbare rug. The chest, whose two drawers were empty except for a European plug and three ancient mothballs, was the only piece of furniture in the room, aside from the single bed. But the window gave Gaby a view of the hillside, and it was here that she decided to sleep. She made up the bed and put her books on top of the chest:
David Copperfield
and
Middlemarch
, the two longest novels she had been able to find that morning. Even if she did nothing but read for the whole time she was here, they would keep her going. She took off her shoes and jacket, put on her slippers and an extra jersey, put her toilet bag in the bathroom and went back downstairs, treading heavily on the stairs to break the silence.

It was very strange, she thought, being in a house where there were no other people, no phones, no radio or TV, no CD-player, not even anything like a dishwasher or washing-machine, whose sound would give the chugging reassurance of a domestic routine. She whistled, then said out loud, to break the silence: ‘Right. This is what you asked for so you'd better make the most of it.'

What she wanted was a richly melancholy, nostalgic mood to settle on her so that she could brood on her life and find it full of meaning. She wanted to be done with
the thin, faltering dejection of the past weeks and enter a time of full-hearted sorrow, anger, hope and love. She wandered into the sitting room, where the fire was now blazing steadily, giving out heat, and the smoke had dispersed. Crouching in front of it, she closed her eyes and felt the warmth on her cheeks. For several minutes she didn't move. Outside, she could hear the rain strengthening; it seemed to be beating on her skull and suddenly she leapt to her feet. Her walking-boots and waterproof still lay on the floor where she had left them. She put them on, then opened the door and stepped out into the weather.

There was no moon and no stars and it was icily cold. The rain stung her cheeks and bounced off the muddy drive like bullets. The wind whipped her hair against her skin. Almost immediately Gaby's hands felt raw and her chin, nose and ears burnt. She pulled up the hood of her jacket and set off towards the hillside, feeling her boots sink into claggy mud. She clambered over a slimy stile, disentangled herself from tenacious briars, stumbled at a rabbit hole, but on she tramped until she was far enough up the hill to turn round and look back at the cottage. From this distance, it seemed quite cosy: the lights were on in all the rooms and smoke was rising out of the chimney. She clambered higher and the cottage became smaller, a fuzz of soft light in the streaming darkness. She was wet through; the waterproof jacket seemed designed to funnel rain on to various parts of her body; it ran in a channel round the collar and spouted down her neck; it gushed off the gutter of its hem on to her jeans, which stuck to her thighs uncomfortably. Her
boots were full of water and made a sucking noise with every step she took. Rain poured down her cheeks and dripped off her nose. Her ears were throbbing with cold and her eyes filled with tears, which were viscous in the low temperature. Several times she stumbled and fell, and with each fall into ice and mud her spirits rose. She was hungry, she was soaking, she was freezing, she was tired and alone and scared. But she was all right.

Gaby didn't get back to the cottage until past seven o'clock. She peeled off her sodden layers of clothing inside the door, then ran up the stairs to towel her hair and pull on her thick dressing-gown. A few minutes later she went into the sitting room, put more logs on the dying fire and blew on the embers to get it going again. Next, she went into the kitchen and considered what to eat that evening. She opened the fridge and studied the food Connor had given her. Tomorrow, she thought, she would have the lasagne, but tonight she would make herself bacon and eggs, mopped up with a baguette and swilled down with mugs of strong tea. She remembered seeing tins on the shelf in the larder and when she went to look, she found baked beans. Better and better – Connor hated baked beans and Gaby couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten them. Perhaps she'd even have the meal in bed, with blankets piled on top of the duvet, and
David Copperfield
open in front of her.

Which was what she ended up doing. She left the curtains in the bedroom open so she could see out of the window from where she lay propped up in bed, several pillows behind her back, the hot-water bottle at her feet
and on her lap a plate of bacon covered with broken, oozing egg and sticky orange beans, that she pushed onto her fork with pieces of buttered baguette. The rain continued, and when she snuggled down under the duvet and closed her eyes, its steady patter against the pane comforted her. It was the last thing she heard as she sank into sleep.

She woke with a start, confused. Where was she? She gazed out of the window, wondering if a sound apart from the rain and the wind had woken her, then, just as she was about to slide back to unconsciousness, a thought snagged her and she groaned. She had left the car door open when she was trying to light the stove with its cigarette lighter. The interior lights had been on for hours, and now the battery would probably be flat. She knew she should go and shut it, but her bed was piled high with blankets and the place where she lay was so beautifully warm. She folded herself up more tightly in the duvet and laid her arm over her eyes to shut out any vestige of light.