Free The Moment You Were Gone by Nicci Gerrard

doors down at the end of the corridor, which was full of new students and their anxious-lookingparents. Gaby smiled energetically, catching people’s eyes, and said, ‘Hello,’ to anyone who smiled back. She nudged Ethan a couple of times to indicate promising faces, but he ignored her.
    Now he had wandered off to make tea for them, and while he was gone, Gaby rang up for train times from Exeter to London. Then she squatted among the boxes and bin bags, unzipped his larger suitcase and lifted out a pile of creased T-shirts.
    ‘Here we are. It’s a bit milky. What are you doing?’
    ‘Unpacking.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I don’t know. I was being motherly, I suppose.’
    ‘I prefer it when you’re not, you know. It unnerves me. I can do all of that later.’
    ‘Of course you can.’ She grinned at Ethan ruefully. ‘Sorry. I’ll drink this and be on my way.’
    ‘Have you got plans for the evening?’
    ‘Apart from breaking into the house, you mean? I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll go to a film or something. I’ll see if anyone’s free.’ She sipped her tea. ‘What’ll you do?’
    ‘No idea.’
    ‘There are lots of things laid on for you if you want, aren’t there?’ She gestured at the leaflets that had been waiting for him.
    ‘I guess.’
    This was just the idling talk before leaving. She took a large gulp of tepid tea and put down her mug purposefully. ‘Will you call me soon, let me know how you’re getting on?’
    ‘Sure. Um – about what we were saying earlier …’
    ‘What were we saying earlier?’
    ‘You know, about being a mother and whether you ever regretted it.’
    ‘Oh, OK. Yes?’
    ‘Did you think of having me aborted?’
    ‘No!’ Of course they had. It wasn’t what they’d planned; it wasn’t what
she
’d planned. She’d wanted to work, to travel, to cast around for who she really was, to choose who she wanted to be. That was how it had always felt to her and still did in a way. She didn’t want to be responsible for someone else and lose the carefree, reckless twenties to sleepless nights, nappies and selflessness. Yet, like a perfect little clock, the growing life ticked away inside her.
    ‘I don’t mind, you know. I put it wrongly – of course, it wasn’t me you would have been aborting, just a cluster of cells the size of a pea. Lots of people think that a foetus doesn’t become a baby until it’s born.’ He got up and looked out of the window, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. ‘Rosie had an abortion.’
    ‘Did she?’ So that was what all the questioning had been about. Gaby tried to keep her voice neutral in spite of the sharp pity that ripped through her. ‘When?’
    ‘A month or two ago.’
    ‘Is that why –?’
    ‘Why she ended it? Or why I couldn’t end it, even though I wanted to? Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe she couldn’t bear to have me around after that and I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Not while she might need me.’
    ‘What did you feel about it?’
    Ethan rubbed his eyes. Suddenly he seemed veryyoung. ‘I would have been really disturbed if she’d said she wanted to keep it. Christ, I didn’t want to have a baby. It would have been insane. It was obvious she’d have an abortion. And it was her decision, anyway. Not really anything to do with me. Except it felt so weird, knowing it was growing inside her even though it was totally invisible, and if she did nothing it would – Well, it’s confusing, isn’t it? You think, My life could change, just like that. Except, of course, it was never going to. I’m rambling.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re telling me this.’
    He could have been a father, she thought. My little boy. Then she thought, And I could have been a grandmother. Absurd.
    ‘Anyway, it made me think. Not about abortions – I still
think
what I always did about that. It just made me think. Everything was going the way it was meant to go, you know – the right grades at fucking A level, a gap year,