Borderliners Read Online Free PDF

among the national populace. Although there was a tendency to put a brave face on it and joke with grim irony about how life had failed their community, there was a void beneath it all which I found alarming.
    I thought about how some of the people I saw in the surgery would shout cheery abuse at me as they made slow progress with their walking sticks or sped along the pavement on their mobility scooters as I went for my runs through the village streets and the surrounding area. It appeared running wasn’t something they saw every day. But I hadn’t been hurled any cheery insults recently. I frowned for a second, realising that after a few of my hostile stares, some villagers might have given up on that. The braver ones had taken to sidling up to me at the butcher’s or the supermarket to say ‘I saw you running,’ in a hushed undertone. I allowed myself a quick smile at the thought of how brave they would really need to be if they only knew what I was capable of.
    As the kettle boiled I flexed my arms, stretching my body into a couple of Tai Chi moves I often used to wind down. Although I’d been forced to do it as a youngster, I found it useful to keep up with my martial arts training and practice. Mid-stretch I stopped and frowned again: it occurred to me that even if I wasn’t running, people weren’t keen to greet me in the street these days. Even though I’d lived here for longer and my face was known around the place - I stood out like a sore thumb, I supposed. Probably a couple of inches taller than the average woman, men, in particular, reacted oddly towards me. Still, at least I’d had some sort of reaction when I’d first moved to the village. The lack of contact with local people had become more marked the longer I’d been here. Recently it had felt as though I’d failed some kind of test: I wasn’t one of them and never would be.
     
    About half an hour after I’d crossed the threshold, the doorbell jangled. My head still full of thoughts about my status in the village, I set my mug of tea down on the kitchen worktop and looked at my watch. It was 6:30pm, now quite dark outside, and I wasn’t expecting visitors.
    As I turned to peer through the glass at my uninvited guest, I caught my breath. It was Vince, a colleague of mine from the village council: I could tell it was him from his stance, languid but tense at the same time, and the slightly hunched over appearance of his shoulders as he shoved his right hand into his jeans pocket. I noticed him lift his other hand up to flick a strand of his coarse, chin length hair from his eyes as he waited. He would start tapping one of his feet soon. Although cool on the surface, he was like a tightly wound coil: his impatience tangible but unvoiced. I hesitated for a second before I remembered I still had a council report on some new playground equipment for which we were trying to secure funding.
    I opened the door with caution.
    ‘Sorry, not a good time?’
    I stifled a jump at the sight of my pale, wary reflection in the sharp green of his irises. ‘I'm just in from work,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’
    ‘I thought I’d drop in for that report.’
    I breathed out as I turned to move further inside, motioning for him to follow. A bead of sweat made its way down my back as I heard him step into the hall and close the door behind him.
    ‘Come through,' I said. 'I think I left it in here.’
    His eyes followed me. ‘In here.’ I beckoned for him to come through. As he joined me at the doorway I flicked on the light switch and froze.
    ‘Elena?’
    The report I had left on the coffee table that morning had been displaced to the edge. Instead, spread across the centre of the table were my grandmother’s Tarot cards, which should have been safely ensconced in the sideboard where I’d returned them the previous night. Vince’s gaze followed my own, his eyes coming to rest on the card reading. For a few long seconds my mind jumped about as I