The Liminal Places

‘He was just too much of a townie,’

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‘People call us townies,’

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‘Yes, but he was from a city! And we aren’t townies, not really.’

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Sophie was sat on the lawn with me, hunched over a cup of tea and picking at the grass. The geriatric Jack Russell had sprawled against her bare legs, her long hair tickling his face when wind passed through the garden. She had broken up with her boyfriend Grant; red headed, rugby player, drug problem.  

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‘I didn’t like him.’ 

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‘You told me,’ she laughed. ‘Many times.’ 

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‘He didn’t like the sea,’

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‘Bit odd.’

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‘Like, why move here?’ 

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Unfathomable silence. It was one of those evenings in early summer when everything stills. The sister to winter snow. So gentle was the hum of traffic that I could have mistaken it for shuddering leaves. Blackbirds worried between hedgerows and gulls circled overhead, edging the blue higher and higher. The low sun coated the garden in a sepia glow and, through the kitchen window, I could hear the sizzle of onions in a frying pan. Mum was readying dinner. Sophie spoke again.

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‘He didn’t even like the country, remember in the forest?’

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One winter birthday, four of us drove to the pine forest twenty minutes from town; me, Sophie and our boyfriends, Liam and Grant. Against the sky, pines stood like charcoal etchings and behind them the winter sun was reaching for sleep. The path, walked by many visitors, was damp and littered with needles. Coated with soil, orange leaves wasted into the earth. It was like walking through the embers of a fire. 

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We walked further into the forest until a fallen tree blocked our way. Felled in a November storm, we rallied in line and made our way along its back. Sophie was last. She squatted here and squatted there along the trunk, looking for a place to alight. Her laughter croaked out like Morse code.

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‘You look like you’re doing a poo,’ said Liam. Sophie laughed harder. Grant was fretting beneath her, his bobbled hat skimming the tree’s wooden underbelly. 

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‘Just jump, for God’s sake!’ I shouted.

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‘It’s too high to jump, she might slip.’ Grant pointed at the tree, the soil, even himself as a place for her to put her feet. Some bizarre game of woodland twister. With one foot on the bark, and one on his hand, she slipped through his arms and joined us at the front of the expedition, laughing all the while.

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Half an hour later we lost the trail. Sinking slowly into sodden marsh, laughter rang up again. Three of us squelched between the rigid grasses, pulling each other free and searching for dryer land.

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‘This is gonna ruin my shoes,’ Grant was a way behind, hobbling through the bog. ‘The sun is going down and we’re lost,’

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‘It’s half past three and you can hear the road. If we really get lost, we’ll follow it back to the car.’ Sophie said, not looking back to him. 

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Falling through mud, we mimicked the calls of the rutting deer and threw pinecones between each other. Rough and tumble. Finally, something the rugby player could get on board with. Launching a pinecone hand grenade, it hit Sophie on the head, and he charged her off the path and into a gorse bush. The game ended. Back at the car we, changed our shoes and made plans for the pub. 

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‘Let’s go home.’ Grant said.

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Back in my parents’ garden, a few starlings jostled across the blue and settled on the garage roof. They chattered all the while, gregarious and brash, before darting towards the firs that line the school behind the house. 

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‘They always remind me of home,’ said Sophie, sitting up to watch them disappear.

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‘For me it’s the gulls,’

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‘He hated them too.’