The Moment You Were Gone (35 page)

‘I don't think so.'

‘Because if you turn out to be –'

‘Ethan, do you always have to talk so much?'

‘No,' he said. ‘No.'

He ate prawn vindaloo until his eyes watered, drank red wine, told stories and jokes, teased Phoebe, begged for anecdotes about Lorna as a child, gabbled with happiness, ran up the stairs with lemon barley water for Polly, washed the dishes, helped Jo with her Spanish verbs, played Monopoly with Lorna's father and made him happy by going spectacularly bankrupt in record time.

Then he lay on the living-room sofa-bed, covered with a thin, lumpy duvet and looking at the ranks of framed
family photographs on the windowsills. He saw Lorna as a baby, as a tiny girl with bobbed hair and gappy teeth; he saw her growing up. He saw her with her mother, her father, her sisters, her pet rabbit; then second to the right in some large family gathering but he would have recognized her anywhere. In shorts and sandals with an ice-cream; in wellington boots and braces; in tight jeans and a T-shirt that showed the curve of her new breasts. As a teenager, standing as straight as she did now, she had had the same luminous smile on her smooth oval face. Standing with her sisters round her mother, gaunt and old with illness.

He could hear lavatories flushing, taps running and doors shutting upstairs. He turned off the light, put his head on the pillow and waited, his eyes wide open in the darkness, until at last he heard her footsteps coming lightly down the stairs towards him.

1 December

Alex finished with me yesterday. He said he wanted to be ‘free' and he thought I did too. I wanted to say: ‘Free to go off with Odette?' but I didn't really need to know. I've had my fill of knowing for the time being. Now I just want to get on with life and not have my head full of new, exciting, sad and hurtful things. And then I wanted to say that ‘free' is just another word for ‘lonely', but I didn't, of course – because, actually, I only thought of that after he'd gone and I couldn't really run after him and tell him, could I, just to have the last word? Anyway, he would have thought of something much cleverer in reply. I shrugged and said, ‘OK.'

And it is OK and I think he was probably right and we don't really want to be tied to each other when our lives are opening up and there are whole new worlds in front of us. I mean, I'm not exactly over the moon at being dumped. I feel a bit low and drab and Sundayish – and it is Sunday, and it's grey outside, and the kind of cold that makes your bones ache. But it's my pride not my heart that's hurt. You fall in love with someone and you can't imagine not being with them – I mean, you don't go around thinking it's for ever, not when you're still at school, but you don't see there being any end. As soon as you do, it's really over, however long you struggle to convince yourself you can work it out. I had already seen there was an end with Alex, I just didn't think
we'd quite reached it. Or am I saying all this to make myself feel better?

I told Mum at once. Maybe before I would have hidden away with it for a while, but I thought I'd done enough of that with her to last us a good few years. I can always tell what's going through her head. I could see, in the split second before she gave me a firm but not prolonged hug, that she was working out how to be sympathetic without inflating it into a grand tragedy. She wanted to strike the right balance, not make me feel alone because she didn't understand or more miserable because she had overreacted. She said he was a blind idiot and he didn't know how lucky he was to have gone out with me in the first place. ‘Fuck him,' she said, in her brisk voice. I was so surprised I almost passed out. My mother never swears. Then she reverted to type and made a pot of tea and brought out the chocolate Digestives. Chocolate's very good when you're feeling a bit down. Chocolate, baked potatoes with lots of butter, rice pudding, scrambled egg on brown toast, dunked biscuits, tea.

I've just noticed something. I'm not addressing this to you any more (except now I am, of course, but that doesn't count). Now that I've found you, it's as if you're fading away and losing your power. Or maybe it's just that you're no longer a ghost who's haunting me day and night. You're real and ordinary and about my size. A woman who made mistakes. I almost miss the you that you were because there's a kind of hole where you once were. You were like God, invisible and omnipotent, and I could pray to you and curse you and wonder if you really existed and think I wasn't responsible for my own life and mistakes – you were. Is this what growing up is? Not being able to blame it all on someone else?

Tomorrow I'm going to go round to Goldie's and we'll revise for our mocks together; they're the week after next and I'm really behind. Then I'm going to give in my notice at the café. Soon it'll be Christmas, but before then I'm going to try to meet my – what do I call him? My biological father: Connor; Dr Myers. And maybe my half-brother, Ethan, if he wants to meet me. The thought of having a half-brother makes me tingle. I wonder what he looks like and if he's at all like me. I wonder what he thinks. I wonder if he knows. I wonder if he hates me.

Later

I plucked up courage and Googled him. Dr Connor Myers. There were hundreds of entries and I only selected a few because most were specialist websites and talked about things I had never heard of, though I'm a scientist myself, or I want to be. Maybe I get that from him. Maybe I'm good at maths and physics because he is.

At least I know now that I look like him. Nancy said so, but I didn't pay much attention to that. I thought it was maybe her way of distancing herself from me – I look like him so I don't look much like her, apart from the colour of my eyes, of course. Then I saw his picture. He's thin and dark-haired, with high cheekbones and an intense stare: you can sense it even from a computer screen. And even I could see myself in his face. It was a very odd sensation – disquieting. This man whom I hadn't thought about (why haven't I? why have I thought incessantly about my real mother and hardly at all about my real father?) and now I discover he's got my face. Or I've got his, I guess.

He's got lots of letters after his name and lots of publications
with titles like ‘RSD: Nerves and Their Consequences', and ‘Pain Neurotransmitters and Their Effects', which talked about things like ‘neuroplasticity' and ‘allodynia' (I looked that up – it's when even the smallest puff of air or a drop of water can cause agony). But some links led to more general articles. There was a piece about him opening a pain clinic and an interview with him in the Guardian about torture. There was a bit where he said that torture turns a human into an instrument and ‘uncreates the self', and that it is ‘pain made visible'. He said things like, pain becomes the world, the body has a memory, the self is split into subject and object. I couldn't grasp what he meant – it was like some of the things in physics that you have to hold on to with all the power of your mind because you know that as soon as you let them go you'll lose them, like you lose a dream on waking. I've kind of lost what he was trying to say already, though I feel it's somewhere in my brain and when I'm feeling alert and clever I'll go back to it and try to grapple with it. He ended by quoting Primo Levi: ‘Anyone who has been tortured, remains tortured.' And then Emily Dickinson: ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes.' I found myself thinking I'd really like to meet him – not as my biological father, but as a man who's done lots of interesting work and has a head full of ideas I'd never thought about before.

I found myself hoping I was like him. Is that a dangerous thought? And what would Mum and Dad feel if they knew I was thinking it? Maybe he'll turn out to be grim and dry, like creepy Mr Casaubon in
Middlemarch,
but he didn't sound like that.

There was nothing about his wife or Ethan.

His wife: Nancy's friend, Ethan's mother. I haven't thought
about her. Nancy didn't even tell me her name. I've been imagining myself as the centre of this story, but there's a whole other story going on that I haven't started to imagine and which I'm only on the margins of. My story's about finding out where I come from, but hers is a story of betrayal and I'm a symptom of that. Poor woman. I hope she's all right.

At the end of the first week of December, when the trees were bare, the ground hard and days had shrunk into a few pinched hours, Gaby put her hands on Connor's shoulders, kissed him on both cheeks, then steered him in the direction of the front door.

‘Gaby –' he started to say, but she shushed him.

‘It's OK, you know. You're not going to your execution, you're going to meet your daughter.'

‘You do know how much I –?'

‘Go on. You don't want to be late, do you?'

‘I suppose not.'

He looked so stricken that she relented. ‘Don't torture yourself,' she said gently. ‘You'll go mad like that. I want you to go. I want you to like her and her to like you. I want you to answer her questions and be honest with her. Otherwise there's no point, is there? She's on some kind of a search – for herself, who she really is – and you've got to help her.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘You know so. You've agreed to meet her, so you should meet her wholeheartedly.'

‘I feel as if I'm betraying you all over again.'

‘You're not. And I don't feel like that.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Sure.'

‘But –'

‘You really will be late.'

‘I love you.'

‘I know you do.'

‘Will this always come between us?'

‘It's not like that. It's more complicated than that and – oh, look, Connor, this isn't the right time. You're half-way out of the door to see Sonia.'

‘Right. I'll go, then.'

‘Yes.'

‘So – goodbye.'

‘ 'Bye.'

‘And, Gaby –'

‘Go!'

‘And you'll be around later?'

‘Of course. I'm not about to run away.'

‘Sometimes I'm scared I'll come home and you –'

‘Connor! This is mad.
Go
.'

He bent his head forward to kiss her and she half turned her face so that he touched her cheek, not her lips. She wasn't angry, she wasn't jealous, she didn't feel she was a wronged woman, she didn't want to punish him, she didn't want what had happened so many years ago to lie like a shadow across their lives – yet she felt that their relationship had changed and she didn't know how to win back the frank and confident affection she used to take for granted. As for making love – she couldn't imagine how it would happen again. A terrible self-consciousness had gripped them both. For a couple of weeks, she had continued sleeping in Ethan's room. Connor had never tried to come in and she had never
expected him to. He would wait for her to make any first move. Eventually she had returned to their bedroom, but she might as well have been in a separate space. They lay rigidly on their own sides of the bed, careful not to touch each other by mistake. Sometimes he would reach out and hold her hand; sometimes she would touch his shoulder or his warm, sinewy back when she said goodnight, or would lean over to kiss his cheek. But on most nights they went to bed at different times. The dark and silent spaces of the night, which in the past they had wrapped themselves up in together, had become lonely, empty ones. Sometimes when Gaby woke in the small hours, she would lie and listen to Connor's breathing and long to wrap her arms round his body and press her face into his neck. But she never did.

‘Shall I get us something simple for sup –?' he was saying, as she closed the door, unable to bear his fretful hovering a moment longer.

She leant against it and heard his footsteps going down the path. Then she went into the kitchen and pulled open the fridge. It was clean and bare, just a carton of semi-skimmed milk and a bottle of white wine in the door, a slab of cheese, a carton of eggs and a few jars of condiments on the shelves. She pushed it shut and went slowly up the stairs to get ready for the day. She dressed in jeans and a bright red shirt, then piled her hair on top of her head and put on a long pair of earrings. Winter lay ahead of her – a time for a fire in the hearth, candles, puddings. Perhaps she should buy herself some new clothes, she thought. Something velvet, something cashmere, something sequined, something to put a spring in
her step. Or gloves and buttons and scarves with stripes. She was trying not to think about Christmas, though she had always loved it, in spite of Connor's grumpiness and atheist's disgust. He liked to be austere and year after year suggested donating money to a charity of their choice and going walking in the Lake District; year after year she sent the money to charity, then got the largest tree that would fit into their living room and clogged its branches with tasteless baubles and tinsel that gradually spread across the carpet, made pomanders with oranges and cloves and hung them from the beam in the kitchen, bought advent calendars and crackers and too many presents, which she wrapped in lavish paper and tied with ribbons that she scraped into tightly sprung curls, filled up the cupboards with mince pies, dates and chocolates, organized drinks parties that overflowed up the house with drunken voices, invited any lonely friend over for the day itself, went round the house singing carols in an exuberant, out-of-tune voice, wore clothes that glittered and carried with her an air of festivity that made the smallest gathering into a celebration. This year, though, she wasn't filled with the same delight. Rather, she felt anxiety and anticipatory weariness. She didn't know, feeling as she did, how she would get through the whole charade yet again, and suddenly all the years of childish pleasure seemed shrill to her, and false.

But this wasn't the way to be thinking. Today she was resolved to work hard, make contact with friends, fill the hours with activity that would stop her brooding or imagining Connor's meeting with Sonia. It was cold outside. The glorious autumn had led into grey, chilly
winter; experts were predicting a ferocious cold snap. She put on boots, coat, gloves, scarf, a hat that she pulled down over her ears, and marched out into the street. The sky was a milky white and the houses and trees bleached of colour. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and, during the walk to the Underground station, called her friend Sal and arranged to meet for lunch. Then she tried Ethan, but got his voicemail – he was probably in bed. She could picture him lying there, one arm thrown across his face, his mouth slightly open and his long lashes closed.

Gaby's resolve lasted until mid-afternoon. She worked hard all morning, doing the tedious, bureaucratic jobs like filing and working through her emails that she had been putting off, then spent an hour with Sal in a bistro, dodging all the questions she didn't want to answer and putting on a good show of cheerfulness. But at three o'clock, when she'd answered all the emails, made the urgent phone calls to theatres and reached the bottom of the in-tray, she was hit by a wave of dejection that left her startled and breathless. She gripped the edge of her desk, lowered her head and waited for it to ebb away, and it was at this moment that Gilbert, her boss and friend, walked in, whistling tunelessly. He was wearing a dark suit and a flamboyant dandy's tie; a hat was squashed on to his head and a coat hung on one arm. His belly bulged over the top of his trousers and his cheeks were red from the cold and perhaps from his long lunch. The whistle died on his lips when he saw Gaby. He slung his coat over the chair and tossed the hat on to his desk. ‘What's up with you?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Do you expect me to believe that?'

‘Really – nothing.'

Gilbert held up a hand in protest. ‘Hey, Gaby. Tell me to mind my own business if you want, but don't try to tell me nothing's wrong. I'm not a complete idiot, you know. Nor am I blind. For weeks now you've been down in the mouth. I thought maybe it was woman's stuff at first – you know, mysterious things I don't understand. But it's more than that, isn't it? Something's upsetting you.'

‘Gil, I –'

‘You don't need to tell me. But if you want to, here I am.'

‘I know you are.'

‘You're not going to say anything, are you?'

Gaby opened her mouth to tell him once more that she was fine, nothing the matter, just winter dreariness – then changed her mind. ‘Do you want to go for a walk?' she asked.

‘Sure. We can go to the park if you'd like.'

‘It's easier to say things if you're not looking at someone when you say the words.'

‘You're not dying, are you? You've not got cancer or anything?'

‘No!'

‘Or Connor?'

‘No, Gil.'

‘Ethan – it's something to do with Ethan. Drugs or –'

‘Ethan's fine.'

‘Thank God for that. Get your coat and we'll be out of here.'

Out on the street, he wrapped an arm round Gaby and
matched his steps to hers. It occurred to her that she hadn't been hugged for a long time and she leant gratefully into his solid warmth, breathing in the rich brew of cigarettes, wine, aftershave. ‘So?' he said.

She swallowed. ‘So …'

It didn't take her long; there was just enough of a story to get them round the park twice and back on to the street as the light was failing, although she started in her childhood, when she had had a best friend called Nancy, and continued steadily through the parallel accounts of her friendship and her marriage. Gilbert was a good listener. He didn't interrupt, occasionally made a sympathetic humming noise or tightened his grip on her shoulder to show her his attention wasn't flagging.

‘And that's about it,' she finished. ‘Here I am.'

‘Here you are.'

‘But where is that? I don't know where I am any more. I can't live like this. I'm distant from everything. From Connor especially. I mean, we've talked and cried and been incredibly honest with each other – but at the same time, I'm far away, looking at myself. And he's very aware of it. Even when I'm making a huge effort to be warm and generous, he can tell I'm not really there. And I don't know how I'll ever be there again.'

‘What do you want?' Gilbert asked.

‘Oh – want. I want to want things again. I want to want Connor. I want to want my life.'

They walked a few paces without saying anything.

‘What do you think I should do?'

‘You don't need anyone's advice, Gaby. It's too important for that. But perhaps you should go away for a bit.
I don't mean a separation or anything like that, I mean go away to get a fresh view on what's happened.'

‘Do you think that might help?'

‘I don't know. Maybe.'

‘But Christmas is coming. Ethan'll be home soon. I can't just up and go.'

Gilbert chuckled. ‘You can, you know.'

‘And it's the busy time at work.'

‘Oh – work,' he said dismissively. ‘Don't worry about that.'

‘Really? You wouldn't mind?'

‘No one's indispensable.'

‘I know.'

‘Except in a marriage.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘I've got a cottage you could use.'

‘You have? Why don't I know that?'

‘I never go there, that's why. It was my brother's and he left it to me when he died. Sol and I used it a bit before we split up, but not much. We weren't very good at roughing it and it's a bit run-down, to be honest.'

‘That doesn't matter.'

‘And pretty remote – it doesn't have a phone line and it's heated by an old wood-burning stove, which isn't very efficient. I keep telling myself I have to do something with it – sell it or do it up, or both. But I've never got round to it, so it just stands there. It could be lovely, with some work.'

‘Where is it?'

‘On the Welsh borders.'

‘Wet, then.'

‘Oh, yes,' Gilbert said with relish. ‘At this time of year, it's wet and cold and grey, with armies of nettles in the garden, the wind whistling down the chimney at night, slates falling off the roof, and the water comes out of the tap in spurts of rusty brown. Very authentic, if you like that kind of thing.'

‘It sounds perfect.'

‘Mice in the roof, I wouldn't be surprised.'

‘Bats?'

‘Probably. But views out of the windows to take your breath away, and nothing for miles around but fields and lanes and little woods.'

‘Lovely.'

‘Anyway, Gaby, it's there if you want it. On the other hand you might prefer a hotel in France for a few days instead.'

‘No. If I go, I'd like to go there.'

‘Just tell me when you've decided. I don't need any warning.'

When Gaby got home, Connor was at the kitchen table, still in his suit trousers but with his tie pulled loose and his shirtsleeves rolled up, hammering a piece of rump steak flat with both hands. A bunch of tight yellow roses, still in their paper, stood in a jug by the sink.

‘Hello,' said Gaby, standing in the doorway. ‘What are you cooking?'

He stopped what he was doing and rinsed his hands under the tap. The smile he gave her was tense and uncertain. ‘Hello. I thought just steak and rocket in ciabatta and some good red wine. All right?'