A Life Beyond

Liam crouched down. The gravel pressed through his uniform trousers. He gathered the books carefully, smoothing the damaged page with his thumb before placing it between the others.

No teacher came over. The yard was wide, and there were too many children moving through it. By the time Liam stood again, the boys had gone.

He carried the books to the edge of the building and sat alone beneath the narrow strip of shade. The concrete was warm beneath him. From the oval came the thud of a football and the shouting of children who seemed to belong naturally to one another. Liam listened without looking up.

Home was not always easier.

Being the youngest meant that his brothers and sisters had already formed their own habits and loyalties. They moved through the house with the confidence of people who knew where they fitted. Liam followed behind, often close enough to hear them talking but not close enough to be included. At the family table, he sat among them, yet he often felt as if he were watching from outside.

His fathers presence made that feeling sharper.

Liam understood the change in the house before anyone explained it. Voices became careful. Doors closed more quietly. His mother watched him with concern, and the older children found reasons to stay busy elsewhere. His father could fill a room without raising his voice. Liam felt it in the set of his shoulders and in the silence that settled after he entered.

He did not have the words to describe what made him uneasy. He only knew that being near his father required attention. He watched where the man was, listened for his footsteps, and tried not to say the wrong thing to him.

When school holidays approached, Liam began to dread them almost as much as the school term.

The holidays were supposed to mean rest. His siblings talked about sleeping late, visiting friends, and spending time together. For Liam, the break from school meant leaving one difficult place and returning to another. The schoolyard was open and hostile. Home was familiar, but his uncle’s influence made it difficult for Liam to relax there.

Then, when Liam was ten, his holidays began to change.

He was sent to the family farm or to stay with his gran. The arrangements were spoken of plainly, as if they were ordinary. A bag was packed. Clothes were folded. Someone checked that he had his toothbrush. There was no long explanation, and Liam did not ask for one. He had learned that some subjects made adults grow quiet.

The first time he left for the farm, the morning was cool enough for a jumper. Dust rose behind the car as they travelled away from town. Liam watched the school buildings disappear in the rear window, followed by the shops, the petrol station, and the familiar stretch of road.

For a while, he said nothing.

At the farm, the air smelled of dry grass, machinery, and animals. The silence was not complete; there were birds in the trees, insects ticking in the heat, and the distant groan of equipment moving across the paddocks. But it was a different kind of noise from school. Nothing there demanded that Liam defend himself.

He kept his bag beside the bed and stood near the window, looking over the land. The paddocks ran out towards a pale horizon. Fences divided the property into long, uneven shapes, and the ground was hard beneath the thin grass. It was not beautiful in the way pictures were beautiful. It was wide, weathered, and honest.

Liam found that he could breathe there.

He helped with small jobs when he was asked. He carried things, watched where he stepped, and learned the rhythms of the farm. His hands became dusty. His shoes collected dry mud. At the end of the day, he washed his face and saw the water turn brown in the basin.

No one at the farm asked him to explain himself.

That mattered more than he could have said.

When he stayed with his gran, the world became smaller in a different way. Her house carried the smell of tea, furniture polish, and whatever had been baking in the kitchen. The rooms were familiar and orderly. She noticed when Liam was quiet, but she did not press him to fill the silence.

One afternoon, he sat at the table while she folded washing.

“You can leave those there,” she said, nodding towards the clothes beside him.

Liam looked down at the small pile.

“I was going to help.”

“I know.”

He waited for her to say more. She did not. She continued folding, placing each item into a neat stack.

After a moment, Liam picked up a shirt and folded it too.

The work gave him something to do with his hands. Outside, the afternoon light fell across the windowsill, and a clock marked time from the hallway. There was no school bell, no shouting, and no group of boys waiting for him in the yard.

Still, the safety came with a cost.

His brothers and sisters remained part of the ordinary holiday life he had been removed from. He imagined them together, making plans, sharing jokes, and moving through the house without the same caution he carried. He missed them, even when he did not know how to join them. The distance protected him, but it also made him feel set apart.

At the farm, he was sheltered by space. At his gran’s house, he was sheltered by quiet. In both places, he was away from the schoolyard and away from the pressure surrounding his uncle. Yet he was also separated from the people whose closeness he wanted.

That contradiction stayed with him.

During the holidays, Liam began to discover that his mind could travel even when he could not. He looked through old magazines and studied photographs of clothing, faces, and cities he had never seen. He noticed fabrics, colours, and the confidence of people who seemed free to present themselves as they wished.

The magazines were not a plan. They were simply a place for his thoughts to go.

He imagined streets beyond the dry paddocks. He imagined buildings taller than the school and places where nobody knew his family. He wondered what it would be like to walk into a room without already knowing what people expected of him.

At ten, he could not have described this as longing. It was more like a small opening in a wall.

Each holiday, the opening grew.

Returning to school remained difficult. The same yard waited for him, with its gravel, heat, and familiar voices. The bullying did not disappear because he had spent time away. If anything, the break made the return feel more severe. He had experienced quiet, and now he had to step back into noise.

On his first morning back after staying at the farm, Liam stood at the school gate with dust still caught in the seams of his shoes. The bell had not yet rung. Children moved around him in loose groups.

One of the boys noticed him.

“Back again?”

Liam looked towards the classroom block. His stomach tightened, but his feet continued forward.

He had no victory to carry with him. He had not defeated anyone. He had not found a way to make the schoolyard kind. What he carried was less visible: the knowledge that another place existed, even if reaching it required leaving home.

Looking back, I now understand that those holidays were my first experience of choosing distance as a form of protection. At the time, I only knew that the farm and my gran’s house gave me somewhere to rest. I did not yet understand how deeply I needed that rest, or how much the schoolyard had taught me to expect danger from ordinary days.

The farm also gave me my first sense of a world beyond the one I had been handed. Its roads led away from town. Its horizon suggested that life did not end at the edge of the school grounds. With my gran, I learned that quiet could be kind, even when it left me alone with my thoughts.

I remained the youngest of four, still connected to my family and still separated from them in ways I could not explain. I returned to school carrying the same uniform, the same books, and the same uncertainty. But I also carried a private knowledge of other places.

The holidays had become a recurring escape: the family farm or my gran’s house, a choice made around my fathers presence and the need to keep me safe. I was sheltered there, but I was also isolated. Between those two truths, I began to imagine that one day I might find a life where safety did not require me to disappear.

When school holidays came, the breaks that should have meant rest became a split between two kinds of shelter. I was sent to the family farm or to stay with my gran, the decisions made quietly by adults who avoided explaining why. A bag was packed, someone checked my toothbrush, and we drove away from town with dust rising behind the car. At the farm, the air smelled of dry grass and machinery; the noise there was honest and unthreatening. At my gran’s, the house smelled of tea and polish, a clock ticking through afternoons that asked nothing of me but the folding of a shirt.

Those places let me breathe. They also set me apart. My siblings stayed in the ordinary household life I was moved away from, and I missed the closeness even when I could not join it. During those holidays I began to study old magazines, noticing fabrics and faces and streets that were not mine. The images opened a small space in my mind: somewhere beyond paddocks and schoolyard dust, where a person could walk into a room without being pre-judged.

Looking back, I now understand those holidays as the first time I chose distance as protection. The farm and my gran’s house were safe, yes, but safety came with isolation. I learned that safety need not mean disappearance - only then I could not yet name the life I wanted.

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters in the full book.