Where we Lay by Zoë Davis

 

The floorboards are already awake, soaked in a bucket of dawn light slopped across the bedroom floor. I pre-empt my alarm, watch fat seconds tick towards the hour then slap them quiet. Nothing should disturb the house. At this hour it is a living beast. I feel kinship in our twin heartbeats.

I rise, descend to the kitchen.

As the kettle boils, warmth bubbles within me. As a joist groans, my spine pops in a shuddering stretch. Arms above head, we inhale a new day. Sighs of bone and timber.

I glance at my laptop, name bouncing from edge to edge, screensaver mimicking how I felt in life, following a career, traversing the country. Always in a rush. Always in demand.

It’s too early to work.

My hands hug the oversized coffee mug I take onto the porch, feet settling into smooth timber grooves my sockless feet have carved. The patterns reveal I hold too much weight on my left big toe. I wiggle the pale pink digit like a worm, attracting the interest of a herring gull. It keow-keows, the echo rich as a temple gong, each perfect note skimming waves that lap the jetty.

Hungry.

“I’ll throw you some toast later.”

It’s a promise. After all, aren’t we all just creatures of habit, begging for the kindness of strangers?

I’m so thankful for Oldferry Cabin, an unexpected blessing after the sterile walls and pitying faces. Mine had only been a gift while it was giving. Family, client, colleague, it didn’t matter. I was expected to listen and when I said I understood, no, really understood, they laughed, not realising I knew them better than they knew themselves.

A breeze grazes the salt-washed strait, kisses my lips, batters my tongue, but with it comes something new.

A presence?

I shuffle down the jetty, gull hopping from post to post beside me. On weathered planks, I spread my body flat, trailing fingers through cool water.

I’m stunned by the lives of fish. Salmon are migrating. Seals are gathering near the cliffs, ravenous; protective of their plump-bellied pups. Warnings and desires mingle in a manner that would have once overwhelmed me, but here…

My head snaps up. I’ve been too busy looking down.

Beyond the bay, a body mirrors my own. Too distant to define clearly, but I’ve long stopped using my eyes for such things.

I send a tentative greeting through the briny depths. Reply is immediate: Alone. Not lonely. Peace. Pain.

It is me, four years ago, having left a voicemail on my mother’s phone and no forwarding address.

Pity swells and the cabin door blows open. Another paint-chipped scar.

I long for my distant neighbour. Wish to offer the beating truth of fearless peregrination. I turn to the gull and as if knowing its duty, it cries again. From the other side, a voice voyages to meet mine. Quieter, but no less determined to be heard.

We are home.

<<<>>>