she reminded me of another.
The cops got there when they got there. I moaned about it later but I know the wait wasn’t as long as it felt – Time has a way of dragging on when you’re caught up in the middle of something.
Jean unlocked the door. Waved her hand out into the parking lot. “She says he’s out there. Say’s he has a gun.”
The officer glanced over her shoulder at Maroula, with a look that suggested he didn’t really believe in things that went bump in the night. When he asked “Is she drunk?” I wanted to throw a box of Virginia Slims at his head.
I didn’t. And after a good stare he told Jean to “Go back in and wait” and “Another car’s on it’s way.”
As Maroula begged the older woman to keep the door locked, I flashed back to offender profiling, victimology studies (see no.23) and EU prison law.
I remembered another woman, just a year earlier, who jumped from a third story window and broke most of the bones in her lower body after being tied to a boiling radiator for two weeks…A Legal Aid defence team who drug her through court and tried to paint her a drunkard and a whore…And the guy who did it, who claimed he was just-your-average-Joe engaging in some innocent, and entirely consensual, S&M. (He ended up getting a laughable two years in prison where he’s now moaning about the food and his human rights.)
I hoped Maroula wouldn’t turn out the same way, but worried that she would.
Continued…
