The Voice Beneath the Heart
When Liam returned to his small Yorkshire town after sixteen years away, he told no one. Not his mother, not his sister, not the old friend he’d once shared cigarettes with behind the bike sheds. No call, no message, no warning. He simply bought a ticket, stepped off the train at the wind-whipped station, inhaled the cold air laced with coal dust, wet pavement, and distant childhood, and knew—it was time. Something clenched in his chest, as if a whisper stirred inside him: *You’re here.*
He wasn’t heading home. His path led to the derelict school on the outskirts, where empty windows gaped like missing teeth, and cracked walls held the echoes of the past. Half the building had crumbled, but the right wing still stood—peeling plaster, shattered glass, and the familiar gaps in the brickwork where boys once hid their secrets. These walls remembered the shrill of the bell, the thunder of footsteps, first confessions, and the fear that choked words before they could form. In the hollowed-out assembly hall, something lingered—not a thing you could touch, but heavy, like a shadow seeping into bone.
Sixteen years ago, on a damp October afternoon, Liam fell silent. First, his replies grew shorter, his voice quieter. Then *hello* and *goodbye* vanished. Finally came the day he walked in and made no sound at all. His mother called him to supper; his father grumbled about marks. He stared at the floor and said nothing. His parents blamed teenage angst. Doctors muttered about psychosomatics. Counsellors urged patience. But time stretched on, and the words never came back. Only a tattoo—his first, stinging like a slap—spoke for him.
He was twenty when he left. Took any work he could find: delivering parcels, scrubbing boilers, sleeping in damp basements and cheap bedsits. Towns blurred like pages in an unfinished book—strange streets, biting winds, worn-out shoes, voices he let slip past his ears. Then, in a dim tattoo parlour, he caught his own reflection: gaunt but alive. Hoarsely, he told the artist, *Just below the ribs. Write, “I remember.”* Those were his first words in five years—ragged, nearly dead, but his.
He got eight more tattoos after that. Each for a silence, a scar, an unspoken truth. For the fear of opening his mouth. For the night he couldn’t dial the number. For the name that never left his lips. People asked why he spoke so little. He’d say the important things were under his skin. Then he’d smile, glancing away, as if he knew words could never carry it all.
Now he walked back to where it began. The old changing rooms smelled of damp and rust. Lockers groaned like they resented the neglect. Glass crunched underfoot; the air hung thick with wet concrete and old grudges. Liam moved down the corridor and stopped at a door. Year Eleven, Form A. The final year. Here, that day, the English teacher had peered over his glasses and snapped, *“Liam, why so quiet? Nothing to say?”* And a voice from the back added, *“Boys like him *have* nothing to say.”*
The face of the speaker had faded like a sun-bleached photo. But the voice—high, mocking—had lodged in his mind like a splinter. It rang for years, tightening his throat, forbidding speech. *Why speak when every word’s a target? When anything you say turns against you?* The voice whispered, teased, suffocated. And Liam stayed silent.
Now the classroom was empty. Silence hummed like a plucked wire. Dust, crumbling plaster, a blackboard streaked with chalk fragments. He picked up a stub of chalk. Dragged a line—clean, firm. No words. Just to hear it scrape, proof he was here. Then, with his finger, he wrote in the dust: *I’m here.* That mattered more than any speech—a mark, a confession finally breaking free.
When he stepped outside, the silence had shifted. It no longer weighed on him. The building itself seemed to listen, breathing through its cracks. The air was cold but not unkind, as if accepting his return. Liam pulled an old photograph from his pocket. Seven years old, grinning beside his sister, his parents. He clutched a paper aeroplane they’d launched in the field behind their house. Back then, everything was simple. Before words became a trap.
He hadn’t come back for revenge. Or answers. Or a truth long buried. Only to quiet that voice—to hear his own. Now it rang louder. Not shouting, but *there*. And that was enough.
That evening, he pushed open his mother’s door. She gasped—older, bent, her face a map of wrinkles, but her eyes still bright. He stepped forward. Hugged her. Felt her shoulders—brittle as kindling—and her hands, warm and unchanged.
“Mum,” he said softly.
She froze. Her fingers trembled against his back. Liam heard her exhale—long, shaky, as if releasing breath held for sixteen years.
That was the word. The first. But behind it waited thousands more, biding their time. They no longer hid under his skin or dissolved in ink. They could come out now, as they were meant to: in a voice.
He could speak. Because in this silence, at last, there was room for his sound.
