34 :

Life carried on as normal. Or, as near to normal as circumstances would allow.

It’s never going to be a normal life when you might have to give up your home, your life, your friends, and walk out with thirty minutes notice. You try not to get attached to anything : not your friends, nor your lovers, nor your possessions. You are not these things. You are not what you owe. Or what you own. Or your family. Or your friends.

You. All you are is you. Soul. Spirit. Feeling. That’s what you are. We are not what we own. Or what we owe.

And even that, if you are normal, you leave behind.

I didn’t know quite how long we could live this way. How long credit cards might last. They could be traced. We had to pay cash. Change names by deed poll. Destroy records. Anything to survive.

We were thinking of moving in together anyway, the unspoken pact, a thing that couples do after a while, and maybe one day living a ‘normal life’, whatever normal is, and maybe even being happy. But it was not to be.

Trouble accelerated us. Strangers become friends through necessity. One does what one has to do to survive. When faced with a crisis, the human spirit bonds and we turn to anyone who may be able to help. Anyone.

Crisis brought us together.

She didn’t know how he got the number. Or where he was. Or what he was doing. Was he out there right now? Looking through a zoom lens at number plates. Analysing mobile phone bills obtained from private detectives. Checking credit references and wage slips. I didn’t know. Nobody knew. All we could do, all we could try to do, was try to deduce his motives, his thinking, his actions, and in some way, try to guess what he was doing. I didn’t want to second guess him. I didn’t want to get under his skin, think like he did, just to understand him. I didn’t want to understand him : I wanted to avoid him.

You can’t place yourself inside the mind of a killer, a murderer, a psychopath unless you yourself are one. Sure, one has an imagination. Sure one can try to think in the way you might think one might think, but there is no way you can think as one unless you are one. It will only ever be an imitation, a simulacra, a recreation of the real thing.

But we couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t think like him. In the way that nobody truly knows you, me, us, or who we are, she couldn’t think like him. We had to try and guess based upon what we knew, and what we knew was only betrayed by his actions and words. You can’t read minds. You can’t try to predict what’s going to happen next.

If only I was someone else. If only we had a different life. A life without clouds.

We were in the dark. Lost. Unknowing of what was going to happen next. Not knowing who the next knock at the door might belong to. Not knowing to whom the unseen eyes belong, what they see, or what they think.

The worst thing was the fact that we were now living in siege. At any time we could be observed, watched, attacked. We could never relax. Every face we see. Every person walking behind us. Everyone, everywhere. Could be a killer. Could be the last face we see.

Every day. Every minute.

And what do you do? How do you live? Is it even a life? This survival, this, where each morning alive is just another morning where I didn’t die.

You just carry on. There really isn’t any other way. Do you live in fear? Hide in a corner, waiting for the world to change, waiting for the threat to be lifted, and yet you could never see that threat, never know when it would be lifted?

Whatever situation we’re in, whatever life you live, you try to make it normal. Try to make life liveable. Instill routine and discipline and control.

That’s how you survive.

We still went out. We still made love. We still walked hand-in-hand. We still lived. But always looking over our shoulders with every second. It only takes a second. To fall in love. To lose life.

If you don’t live, you die.

That’s how we stayed alive. We lived as if we were alive. Not living in fear of dying.

Everything changed. And yet, everything stayed the same.

We still went to work. We took different routes. Found a different place to live. Worked in different offices. Changed our mobile phones. Our bank accounts. Changed everything but our names and our memories.

Found somewhere new to live. Found a new way to live. A new way to stay alive.

We went out. We carried on as normal. The victory lay in being alive. We will not stay cowed by fear. We had to be careful. Sure. One always has to be careful. One always must do as little as possible to put oneself at risk. But always, always, we lived, because we were alive.

Our love was too strong to die. Too strong to falter. But somehow too young to realise. Too young to know. Too young to understand. Our love was like a child. Too young to stand alone. All this, us, from our first kiss to this impetuous co-habitation, to this bizarre, self-imposed, fearful, fearless exile, had taken only a few months. We had built our history, our own mythology, our secret language, made of noises and gestures that are meaningless to others, yet somehow mean the world to us.

Our world was changing. We had a new flat now, made of boxes and cardboard. We had taken all our possessions, all our belongings, and strangers had boxed them and removed them, placed them back in our new life, our new world. And, in a far distant suburb, hidden from unseen eyes, we hid. We tried to carve out a new life from this wreckage. We tried to pretend we weren’t always on the run.

We were living a lie, but doesn’t everyone?