Page 3 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

I spot a middle-aged man in a grey T-shirt and khaki shorts holding a tablet with the name Collins on it.

‘There’s our ride,’ I say to my sister as we make our way past a group of men who look to be in their early twenties. As we pass them a wolf-whistle pierces the air like a siren and I feel Antoinette tense up. She stops walking and spins round to face the men. One of them, a guy in a fitted white top, tight joggers that could be described as ‘skinny’ and a backwards baseball cap, gives us a grin.

Antoinette bristles.

Oh God.

Oh God.

But instead of shouting something back at them, which is what I think she’s gearing up to do, she points her phone at the group and snaps a picture, before slipping her arm through mine and continuing to walk.

‘What was that for?’ I ask. ‘Why did you take a photo?’

‘It’s so I can do an image search later and find out exactly who that fucker is,’ she says with a smile.

‘And why would you want to do that?’

She gives me a look like I’ve said something stupid and says, ‘So we can find him and kill him, of course.’

I look at her to see if she’s joking but her face is deadly serious. ‘We’re not doing that, Antoinette.’

‘He blatantly disrespected us,’ she says. ‘He whistled at us like we’re just bits of meat or something. He deserves to die.’

‘It was just a whistle,’ I say. ‘He didn’t hurt anyone. It’s okay.’

She stops walking again.

‘It’s not okay, Kitty,’ she says. ‘It might be just a whistle to you but it’s actually much more than that. He’s a misogynist. He doesn’t respect women. It might start with just a whistle but if he carries on unchecked his next move could be a sexual assault. This shit doesn’t happen in isolation.’

‘I know it’s not nice but he was probably just showing off in front of his friends,’ I say.

‘Who cares,’ she says. ‘He still did it. It’s sexual harassment. What if it wasn’t us that he whistled at? What if it was some other woman, a woman dealing with PTSD or something? What if that one whistle was the thing to push her over the edge?’

She’s got a point.

But still.

‘And,’ she continues vehemently, ‘a guy who catcalls you isn’t trying to date you. He knows that no woman is going to immediately have sex with him because he shouted “nice tits” at her or whatever. Catcalling is about humiliating us. It’s not a compliment. It’s a threat.’

‘Antoinette,’ I say patiently. ‘You’re absolutely and completely right but we can’t kill every man on the planet who catcalls someone.’

‘Why not?’ she asks. ‘It’s stuff like this, Kitty, the everyday harassment, the whistles, the slut-shaming that underpin the rest of it. That makes men think they can get away with the bigger stuff too.’

‘I agree,’ I say, ‘I do. But it’s just not physically possible to murder every man who’s been a bit of a dick. I’ve only got one pair of hands, for a start.’

‘Well, you’ve got me now,’ she says.

‘We’re still not killing him,’ I say and Antoinette gives me a sly look.

‘Maybe.’

‘No maybe. We’re not!’

She shrugs. ‘Whatever. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat.’

I want to ask her what she means but our driver has spotted us walking towards him and is waving frantically.

I wave back.