Alone

Alone.

He was used to being this way. As a boy he had had few friends, and by default fewer close ones. It was not that he could not make friends. It was more that he did not want to. He could fit in to any group of people he came across with comparative ease. There was nothing spectacular about his appearance. Short, light brown hair kept away from his ears, soft brown eyes with a dark mono-brow above them. Even his clothing was unspectacular, being more for comfort than show. It normally consisted of jeans, a t-shirt and a jacket. He had a varied taste in music, was fairly athletic and picked for many of the school sports teams from primary through into the end of his secondary education. Had he chosen to he could have been the life and soul of any party. But he chose not to go out with people he met. A good night for him was sitting alone in his room with his books, his music, his guitar or his computer games for company. When his family finally got the internet installed he started surfing the net as well, but seemed always to keep an almost clinical distance between himself and the plethora of people he met.

He did not open up to people, nor did he feel any need to. Anybody could, and he thought they all did, go to him with a problem and he would endeavour to help them solve it. To many onlookers he was a normal person whose main abnormality was not having any problems of his own.

He had, of his own admittance, a very keen mind. He had done well at school with minimal effort (more because it presented a challenge for him to do no work than anything else) and people often mistook him for someone at least twenty years older than he in actuality was. He could, and often did, find the heart of any problem and find its resolution before someone had finished explaining the problem to him. His father used to tell people “He won his first debate when he was four. I don’t think my brother was prepared for a four year old who could grasp basic economic theorem.”

Why was it then that he decided to keep so much to himself?

He had, after leaving university, begun a somewhat successful career as a writer. He was a multi-best selling author, his collections of short and children’s stories coming out every few years. He was regularly asked to give talks, and made a fair sum of money writing speeches for politicians, business leaders and, on more than one occasion, school headmasters. He was seen at many parties at first, talking with the rich and the famous and looking at no time to be out of place. Then, gradually as he went through his thirties and forties, he seemed to gradually ease himself out of the public eye. He was still writing and never once entertained the thought of using a pseudonym, but he gave fewer and fewer talks, wrote fewer speeches, and finally stopped going to dinners. Being as he was nothing spectacular or memorable to look at he would regularly go out to the post office to post another story or manuscript without being hounded by people who might recognise him. He would walk for hours at a time in the hills of the Peak District or north Wales, keeping always to himself and never exchanging more than minor pleasantries with anyone he happened to meet. His life, he thought to himself, was as uneventful as he wanted it to be. When he was in his sixties, he wrote a poem (which later appeared in the local paper under his middle names) where the last line was “And he was happy he had no friends or family.” This was how he thought of himself. He took one last look around the study where he had written countless stories and poems, speeches grand and humorous, and locked the door behind him.

He had kept in touch with one person in his life, and it was to her that he wrote his final piece.

Dear Clair,

Thank you for keeping in touch with me over the years. I trust you and your husband are well. You should find with this letter two keys. The larger is to my front door, and the smaller to my study. They are the only copies.

I have decided to leave here and take up residence in a small cottage I purchased not too many years ago on the outskirts of a small village in the Midlands. I have kept it fairly well stocked and feel it would be a preferable place for my final years. I would like to thank you for your friendship, and wish you and your family a long and successful life.

Yours sincerely,

J


He died in his sleep, aged seventy three, on the same day his complete memoirs were published.