She had never been much good at speaking her mind.

It’s because you’re a woman, her friend Marge said – we’re trained to please.

It’s because you care about other people, her friend Sally said – you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, I think that’s nice.

You need to get better at it, her friend Helen said – else you’ll spend your whole life compromising.

She didn’t tell any of them about the planes – how she’d drive out after work sometimes, park under the oak tree, climb over the locked gate and walk into the furrowed field, so she could stand right below the path of the planes as they lifted their huge bulks into the sky.

She didn’t tell them how the roar of the engines drowned out everything, so that even she couldn’t hear herself shouting what she really wanted to say.

 

They live at the edges of our vision, vanish when we turn to look. Though we are diligent in our searching and meticulous in our research, they keep slipping into the shadows. We are not who you think we are, one told me once; I asked him, politely, to explain, but he would not.

It is rumoured that the taxi drivers might know how to find them, the hairdressers too. So we are heading for the laybys, the train stations, the nightclubs, and all those glass-fronted shops full of mirrors and blades.