I have no name. For a name you need people to know who can call you by that
name. I have no one. I have no identity. Names are just labels I hide
behind, before I move on again and take a new name. I return to some names
after a while, it saves me having to forge too many passports and drivers
licenses and suchlike. But I can never again use any name that once meant
something to me, they're too dangerous. Too many of the wrong people know
those names.
I am no one, but my story is important.
***
My story could start in several different places, but I probably should begin telling it on the day my life was turned upside down. I was someone then, not much of someone but at least I had a name. My name was Sarah McClarin. I was a physics teacher in Avimoore, a small town in northern Scotland. I didn't have many friends, but there were a few among the other teachers. There was one man, Brian Grenald, a history teacher at the same school as me, whom I was particularly fond of. Although the rumours that we had sex in the RE store cupboard was completely false, we were seeing each other.
We had a date planned on the Friday night when I got the letter, so I was in a good mood. I arrived at my flat and fitted the key in the lock, juggling my bags of marking into my other hand with some difficulty. I hated marking, and was highly tempted at times to let my students off homework just so that I'd have less. I don't think I was a very good teacher. I tended to get annoyed when my students struggled with concepts that seemed perfectly reasonable to me.
I had to shove my weight quite hard against the door to get it to open: it was very stiff. It was only to be expected with the flat being as cheap as it was, but I had been rather short on money when I moved to Avimoore. That had been three years previously, when my only concerns had been getting as far away from the past as possible. I felt that I'd managed it. I hadn't heard from anyone in three years, no one knew where I was, and I was settling quite happily into my new life. There were some things I missed: some friends I would have like to see again, but on the whole, I was pleased that I had managed to escape and set up a new, normal life for myself. As much as I disliked my job, at least the life I led was a normal one.
It just goes to show how wrong you can be. The post lay on my doormat when I got in and I stepped over it to put my things down, returning to close the door and collect it a moment later. Sometimes an extra pair of hands would be useful. There was very little post there: a couple of bills and one envelope with a postmark from London. That made me curious, and slightly worried. I didn't know anyone in London, or anywhere really outside of Avimoore, so no one should be writing to me. None of my friends were away or anything like that. I would have thought it might be misdirected, if it weren't for my name on the front in clear, printed letters. I doubt an unexpected letter would be enough to make most people nervous, but I wasn't ordinary, not even back then. The fact that someone I didn't know was sending me a letter was something I didn't like the idea of. I'd spent so long trying to get away from my past and establishing this normal life that I didn't want it to catch up with me. There were too many skeletons in my cupboard for me to take something like this letter so calmly.
I sat down in what, in my flat, passed for a comfortable chair and opened the letter. I stared at the piece of paper it held for a few minutes before I could work up the courage to actually unfold it and see what it said. The longer I went before reading it, the longer I had to hope. Like Shrodinger's cat, before I read the letter there were two possibilities, and as long as it was unread it could be nothing to do with me. But I had to open it, I couldn't sit there forever and I had to know.
The message was simple and short: "They're coming for you" but it filled me with a cold dread and a sense of something terrifying. It didn't say whom it was from, it didn't say why they had sent it: it just bore that frightening declaration. I couldn't even guess from handwriting who it was from, because it had been typed out, it could have been written on any computer by anyone. I didn't want to believe it, it didn't necessarily mean what I was afraid of after all. I knew enough about the world I lived in to know there were a lot of pranksters around, who enjoyed joking around with things like this. There could be a kid out there who sent this same message to a group of different people, just to scare them. That could be why it was so unspecific. If it really had been from someone warning me about my foes from the past, then they would have put some reference in that I would understand.
The more I thought about it, the more confident I became that that was all it was. The letter was just some sicko's idea of a joke. There was no way they could have found me, not after all this time. They weren't really going to be coming for me. I put the letter in the bin, and went to prepare for my date. It didn't take me long to regret that simple action.
I am no one, but my story is important.
***
My story could start in several different places, but I probably should begin telling it on the day my life was turned upside down. I was someone then, not much of someone but at least I had a name. My name was Sarah McClarin. I was a physics teacher in Avimoore, a small town in northern Scotland. I didn't have many friends, but there were a few among the other teachers. There was one man, Brian Grenald, a history teacher at the same school as me, whom I was particularly fond of. Although the rumours that we had sex in the RE store cupboard was completely false, we were seeing each other.
We had a date planned on the Friday night when I got the letter, so I was in a good mood. I arrived at my flat and fitted the key in the lock, juggling my bags of marking into my other hand with some difficulty. I hated marking, and was highly tempted at times to let my students off homework just so that I'd have less. I don't think I was a very good teacher. I tended to get annoyed when my students struggled with concepts that seemed perfectly reasonable to me.
I had to shove my weight quite hard against the door to get it to open: it was very stiff. It was only to be expected with the flat being as cheap as it was, but I had been rather short on money when I moved to Avimoore. That had been three years previously, when my only concerns had been getting as far away from the past as possible. I felt that I'd managed it. I hadn't heard from anyone in three years, no one knew where I was, and I was settling quite happily into my new life. There were some things I missed: some friends I would have like to see again, but on the whole, I was pleased that I had managed to escape and set up a new, normal life for myself. As much as I disliked my job, at least the life I led was a normal one.
It just goes to show how wrong you can be. The post lay on my doormat when I got in and I stepped over it to put my things down, returning to close the door and collect it a moment later. Sometimes an extra pair of hands would be useful. There was very little post there: a couple of bills and one envelope with a postmark from London. That made me curious, and slightly worried. I didn't know anyone in London, or anywhere really outside of Avimoore, so no one should be writing to me. None of my friends were away or anything like that. I would have thought it might be misdirected, if it weren't for my name on the front in clear, printed letters. I doubt an unexpected letter would be enough to make most people nervous, but I wasn't ordinary, not even back then. The fact that someone I didn't know was sending me a letter was something I didn't like the idea of. I'd spent so long trying to get away from my past and establishing this normal life that I didn't want it to catch up with me. There were too many skeletons in my cupboard for me to take something like this letter so calmly.
I sat down in what, in my flat, passed for a comfortable chair and opened the letter. I stared at the piece of paper it held for a few minutes before I could work up the courage to actually unfold it and see what it said. The longer I went before reading it, the longer I had to hope. Like Shrodinger's cat, before I read the letter there were two possibilities, and as long as it was unread it could be nothing to do with me. But I had to open it, I couldn't sit there forever and I had to know.
The message was simple and short: "They're coming for you" but it filled me with a cold dread and a sense of something terrifying. It didn't say whom it was from, it didn't say why they had sent it: it just bore that frightening declaration. I couldn't even guess from handwriting who it was from, because it had been typed out, it could have been written on any computer by anyone. I didn't want to believe it, it didn't necessarily mean what I was afraid of after all. I knew enough about the world I lived in to know there were a lot of pranksters around, who enjoyed joking around with things like this. There could be a kid out there who sent this same message to a group of different people, just to scare them. That could be why it was so unspecific. If it really had been from someone warning me about my foes from the past, then they would have put some reference in that I would understand.
The more I thought about it, the more confident I became that that was all it was. The letter was just some sicko's idea of a joke. There was no way they could have found me, not after all this time. They weren't really going to be coming for me. I put the letter in the bin, and went to prepare for my date. It didn't take me long to regret that simple action.