The Moment You Were Gone Read Free Page A

revulsion.
    As he drove, he tried not to think too deeply but, rather, to let fragments and images drift in loose formations across his sore mind. The book he’d been reading about tropical medicine. The words of a song, what was it?, lying in a burnt-out basement, something-something, hoping for – hoping for what? He couldn’t remember; the words flickered across the corner of his memory and, as he tried to catch hold of them, out of sight. The meal he’d had with his parents, shepherd’s pie with tepid potato forked into crests and tinned carrots. His body felt itchy and unclean, his limbs heavy with all the driving. He would go on a run tomorrow morning, before he went to the hospital – he would get up at six thirty, before it was properly light, and run along the canal as the sun rose in the sky. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard and saw that it was past midnight; only a few miles to goand already there was the faint orange luminescence of the city on the skyline. He’d never been in absolute darkness, and perhaps it would scare him but he thought he would like it. He found darkness quite welcoming; it was harsh light he disliked. Bare lightbulbs; deserts; wastes of dazzling snow.
    Sally would probably have gone to bed by now; he pictured her dark hair spread across the pillow and her calm face. Outside his room there was mess, noise, the chaos of a shared household, but inside it was neat. Things were in their proper place. The cupboard doors were shut and his textbooks were stacked on the table where he worked. Sally often stayed over but she was careful not to disturb the order. There would be a tumbler of water on the table beside her, a dial of pills and probably a novel or a medical textbook, its bookmark in place. Her clothes would be folded neatly on the chair by the door. She wore a tiny enigmatic smile while sleeping, but occasionally she opened her eyes so that only the whites would show, and Connor, unnerved, would lightly press his thumbs on the lids to close them again, feeling like an undertaker with a corpse.
    He was finding it hard to stay awake although his journey was nearly over and he only had to last another twenty minutes or so. He knew that he should get out of the car for a few minutes, yet he continued sluggishly to drive. The heating wasn’t working properly, so the air that blew out of the right vent was icy, while the one on the left was too warm. His eyelids were heavy and the road wavered in the glare of his headlights. He strained his pebble-eyes wider and stretched his face in an exaggerated,rubbery grimace, trying to focus. He sat up stiff and straight, then took the last square of milk chocolate that was lying in its wrapper on the seat beside him and sucked it slowly, to make it last. Sweetness dribbled down his throat; for a brief moment he felt alert and the road lay blessedly clear before him. But how strange, when you know that to sleep is to die, that it can be so impossible to stay awake. He chewed his lip, then pinched his cheek for a second, hard enough to cause him pain. He tightened his grip on the steering-wheel. If the radio worked, he could find a station, sing along loudly, but all he could get was an unpleasant hissing crackle, with occasional isolated words bursting through the static. He opened his windows to the sharp slap of autumn air and, although he had sworn to himself he would give up smoking, pressed in the car lighter. When it sprang out again, he lit a cigarette. Its tip glowed red as he sucked on it and his lungs ached. He thought of his father’s scorched lungs, he thought about dying, and still sleep pressed down on him. Somewhere ahead he thought he heard a sound, a thunderclap or the shot of a gun, even, then the shriek of an owl. He rubbed his eyes feverishly as the road lurched and trees tipped giddily towards him.
    A figure burst out of the hedgerow and plunged towards his car. At first – even as he pressed his foot on the brake and