The Moment You Were Gone Read Free Page B

swerved violently, tyres screaming, and a toxic burst of adrenaline – he thought it was a shadow, a trick of the darkness and of his fatigue. He couldn’t even tell which direction it was coming from; perhaps it was a large bird flying close overhead. But then the figure resolved itself. He saw that it was shouting, waving itsarms as it wove in front of the car, into and out of the glare of his headlights. He saw, then lost again, a white patch of face with a darkly open mouth and holes where eyes must be, a flying stream of hair, a long skirt knotted up.
    ‘What the fuck?’
    Fists pounded on his window. He pulled on the handbrake and pushed the door open. She half fell in on him, in a yabber of incomprehensible sounds. He caught the smell of tobacco and perfume, a clatter of beads round her neck.
    ‘Oh-God-help-a-car-bodies-help-I-think-they’re-dead-so-young-ambulance-Jesus …’
    ‘Slow down,’ he said sharply, fully awake now. ‘Tell me what you know.’
    ‘Car crash,’ she said, making a visible effort. ‘Just round the corner. They ploughed into a tree. I don’t know if anyone’s alive. The car’s all – it’s mashed up, and I looked in but, oh, Jesus Christ …’ and she came to a juddering halt.
    Gaby herself could not remember what she had said to him. She could not even remember speaking; nor did she have any idea then of whom she was speaking to – man or woman, young or old. All she knew was that she was leaning into a car that smelt of leather, smoke and chocolate, while behind her lay blood and carnage.
    ‘Let me see.’ Connor was out of the car, his legs steady under him; his heartbeat was regular. He felt strangely calm and his voice was authoritative. But everything was happening at a distance. Even as he spoke and acted he was conscious of the figure he cut, the doctor takingcharge in a crisis. He felt simultaneously noble yet absurd, a fraud. But the woman in front of him seemed to believe him. She visibly calmed as he spoke.
    Had she? She didn’t remember that, either. But it was true that the man who stood before her possessed an air of authority and she had immediately trusted him to take over. She was no longer alone in the wild night with dead people.
    ‘Show me,’ he said firmly.
    ‘No! Listen! You’ve got to go to someone’s house and call an ambulance. I’ve only got a bike and I think the chain broke when I stopped.’
    ‘I’m a doctor,’ he said – one day he would be, anyway, and saying the words gave him authority, permission to take charge. ‘You should go and call the emergency services, and I’ll stay and see if there’s anything I can do here. Can you drive?’
    ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘I mean – yes. Yes!’
    ‘Take my car, then. Turn round here. There’s a group of houses about three or four miles away.’
    ‘Try to save them.’ She flung herself into the driver’s seat, pulling the door shut on her striped skirt so it fluttered against the sill in a frippery of colour, and reversed up against the bank in a spray of mud. Shot forward, narrowly missing the ditch; wrenched the wheel round again. The engine roared and the wheels spun into a rut, then took hold. The car bucked. She was leaning right forward in the seat, her face almost above the steering-wheel. Connor saw it, her glittering eyes, her Medusa hair, and felt a twinge of alarm. She was driving the car as if she was trying to break in an unruly stallion: one wouldwin and the other lose. Then he turned his back on her and ran along the road the way she had come.
    Now that he was alone, the confidence leaked rapidly away. He dreaded what he would see when he rounded the corner, and he had no idea what he would do.
    ‘So you were scared too?’ Gaby had said, when they first rehearsed their story, picking out details, remembering things that might or might not be true, but that over time became real in their minds. ‘Yes, I was scared,’ he replied. ‘Terrified.’
    In the event, there