Two Worlds Apart

Then the time came and we were no longer alone together. The rest of the world came back into our small quiet life and drove us apart again.

We had been living quietly, away from the crowds and the cities. We were living where no-one knew our real names, or had any idea what we had done, back in that life we’d left behind.

We knew it was a vain hope, but still we tried to make ourselves believe that the two different worlds of then and now could never intersect; hoping we’d left the old world far behind and it would soon forge about us.

That old world though, never forgets. That it is its role, its function. It exists to gather data and then act on that data. Our files had no last pages in them, with no resolution tying up the ends of the data. Our data were still loose and untied. The old world does not like loose ends. It is terrified that someone, someone from outside of it will see those loose ends flailing in the breeze and will take hold of one of them and tug on it, bringing that whole secret dangerous world tumbling down on those who live inside it.

Jane and I, though, thought we’d left enough tangles in the threads of our old lives to give the illusion they had been tied off and that there was no more data, no loose ends. Realistically, we’d hoped we would have longer, but that early morning - as we lay together in those small hours neither of us could ever sleep through - we heard the cars arriving; engines off, lights off, coasting down the lane to the cottage.

We did not speak, didn’t even glance at each other. We were off the bed, dressed with our escape packs ready before the cars had even stopped moving. By the time the car doors had crept open and then closed quietly we were in the woods behind the house, running… again….