We Could Be Alone

It was a place where we knew we could be alone. We were not – it seemed – even then, much like other people of our own age. We preferred the quiet to the noisy, the contemplative to the rowdy. We preferred the quiet of a walk in the country to a night out at clubs and pubs.

I had never been that good at fitting in, never felt comfortable with other people. Let alone those of my own age, who often seemed more alien to me than those we were supposed not to understand, the older generations.

Miranda, like me was one who didn't fit in. She too, seemed born out of her time. She, though, went her own way, seemingly indifferent to those around her. Unlike all the other girls I'd known, she seemed indifferent to the approval of others, never needing the comfort of fashion or any of the other tribal signifiers and markers with which all our contemporaries displayed their allegiances.

For a while, I had thought about trying to fit in, trying to be like everybody else, but I was never issued with the code book they all used. They knew a different language, use words in a different way, to me. They had a code of dress and style and music and so many other things, which I didn't have, or even know about acquiring.

I lived, as far as I could tell in a parallel but overlapping universe, worlds that didn't quite intersect. So when Miranda and I met, we seemed not only to live on the same plane finding in each other something we both lacked. Then it seemed as though we'd both – at last – found a place we could call home.