The Moment You Were Gone Read Online Free PDF

I
can
drive, but I haven’t passed my test as such.’
    ‘As such?’
    ‘I’ve failed four times, so far.’
    ‘Maybe you should have got a lift with the police officer after all.’
    ‘Too late for that.’
    ‘You’d better take your bike.’
    ‘I want to help you.’
    ‘Help?’
    ‘You keep echoing me. It makes me nervous.’
    ‘Nervous?’
    She stared at his deadpan expression for a few seconds, then laughed. ‘We’ll just have to walk,’ she said. ‘I’ll push my bike. It’s only a few miles.’
    ‘Probably about seven or something.’
    ‘Two hours,’ she said. ‘I walk fast and I bet you do. You look the type.’
    ‘What type is that?’
    ‘Driven. Terse. You probably sleep about five hours every night, get up at dawn to row or run or swim before going off to work for ten hours with only a cup of black coffee to keep you going. Am I right?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Whereas I’m a slob. I need at least ten hours’ sleep. I can sleep anywhere, any time. And I do. Once I went to sleep in the airport bus on the way to the plane, standing up.’
    ‘Like a horse.’
    ‘Did you know that horses’ knees lock into position while they sleep?’
    ‘I can’t say I did.’
    ‘I have a friend who’s got a big car – well, it used to be a hearse. I don’t know why he gets such a kick out of driving around in a hearse – he thinks it’s
ironic
, though I don’t get the irony myself. Anyway I’m sure he can come out and tow you out of the ditch tomorrow.’
    ‘I can do it,’ he said. Connor felt clumsy, anxious, inarticulate, older than her. He thought he knew the kind of background she came from – middle class and probably a bit Bohemian; loving parents who had always given her lots of praise, several siblings, lots of grandparents and godparents and cousins; a big, untidy, ramshackle old house; noise, laughter. She was careless, expansive, uncensored, light-footed; she didn’t mind spouting nonsense or fear that she was making a fool of herself. She’d always been herself, had never had to invent the woman she was to become. She belonged to a different world, one that had always been out of his reach, and he felt a spasm of familiar, sour resentment. But then it struck him thatshe was, through her kookiness, actually and deliberately taking care of him. She was trying to draw him out, and her words were like a trail she was scattering in her wake, hoping he’d want to follow. And he did want to; he did.
    He wished that he could go on walking with her for the rest of the night, and deliberately slowed his pace. He pushed her bike, and when she shivered, he insisted on draping his coat round her shoulders, buttoning it up into a cape, carefully pushing her hair out of the way as he did so. He wanted her to feel safe with him, and he wished that she would stumble so that he could support her, or that she would cry again so that he could hold her in his arms to comfort her. There was a half-moon; there was corn stubble in the fields on either side of the hedges, and bales standing in massed shapes on the horizon. It was like a landscape in his mind and he knew he would remember it later. He matched his footsteps to hers, heard their joint rhythm pulsing behind their conversation, stored away her words. He knew he would bring them out when he was alone; that he would return to the image of her glowing face as it turned towards him. She said she had three brothers and she was the baby of the family. She mentioned someone called Stefan, but he ignored it. Stefan and Sally didn’t belong to this night. He knew very well that his heightened feelings were caused by the particular circumstances – his father was dying, his mother was drinking, he was tired and had been working too hard, there had been a car crash. Gaby had come to him like a figure out of a dream. Like a dream, she would fade with morning and his old life would resume.
    ‘What are you studying?’ he asked, as they walked.
    ‘Physics