The Moment You Were Gone by Nicci Gerrard

had done nothing about it. She hadn’t even mentioned it to Connor, although she didn’t understand why not. She’d practised the words – ‘Guess who I saw on television?’ – but never spoken them. Connor had told her often enough that she should let Nancy go. He had argued, reasonably, that whatever her motives Nancy had made it clear by her behaviour that their friendship was over. It was no good trying to persuade her to change her mind; you couldn’t beg someone to be your friend or plead with them to like you. And neither had she told Stefan, for what was the point? She’d let the image go and it drifted slowly to the muddy depths of her mind where it lay out of sight.
    But now here she was in Liskeard, on some madcap errand to find a friend who wasn’t a friend and ask her – ask her what? Why did you leave Stefan like that? Why did you leave me? Why did you never write? What happened? She wasn’t even sure any more that she wanted to know the answers. To make it worse, there wasn’t a single taxi. It was getting dark, and Gaby stood indecisively, pondering. Perhaps she should get back on the next London train. She could be home before too late, have a long bath and watch a film or curl up in bed with a book.
    But even as she was thinking this, she had turned her back on the station and walked towards the centre of the town. She had no idea of which direction to take – the atlas had shown that Rashmoor was north-west of Liskeard, but which was north-west, for goodness’ sake? Connor knew things like that. He would frown for a fewseconds, considering, then point decisively. And he was always bloody right. It was extremely annoying – like the way when he was driving and she was failing to find where they were on the map, let alone where they were going and what road to take, he would jab the page and say, ‘We’re about there.’ Perhaps she could smell the sea and follow that, or perhaps she could orient herself by the North Star, if she knew which star it was. Wasn’t it the bright one, low on the horizon, or was that the Pole Star – or maybe the Pole Star and the North Star were the same? She squinted up at the darkening sky hopelessly. She should learn about constellations, she thought, knowing that of course she wouldn’t.
    She went into the first pub she came to, making her way through the fug of cigarette smoke to the bar.
    ‘Can you tell me the way to Rashmoor?’
    ‘Rashmoor – let me see, it rings a bell.’
    ‘It’s near here.’
    ‘Yeah – Vicky, do you know where Rashmoor is?’
    ‘Isn’t it the little village up past the old tin mines? The one that got badly flooded in the summer?’
    ‘That’s the one. I knew that, I knew it.’ He leant across the bar to Gaby. ‘Take the first left out of the town, drive up that road for a mile or two, then take the next right along a small road that follows the river. It’s a bit isolated, mind.’
    ‘Thanks. How many miles do you think?’
    ‘Not many. It’ll only take ten or so minutes I reckon.’
    Gaby didn’t tell him she was walking. She asked for a glass of white wine and a packet of dry-roasted nuts, and sat at a small table near the window, sipping the wineslowly and popping nuts into her mouth, crunching them. Then she stood up, waved at the man behind the bar and left.
    Before long, she had left Liskeard. All around her stretched the moorland, scattered with the pale shapes of sheep, and above the great sky heaved with clouds. A bird flew low over the ground in front of her uttering a plaintive cry and once she thought she glimpsed a fox. As she walked, her feet becoming sore and blistered so she had to shuffle, she tried to plan what she would say to Nancy. But it was no good. Her mind refused to co-operate. She understood, but she still didn’t truly believe that in a short while she might be standing face to face with the woman who for years had been her closest friend and who had nearly been her sister-in-law.