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‘Murdering scum.’
Ptah.A slug of phlegm hit the pavement.
‘I hope they castrate him.’
‘Castration’s too good for that maggot.’
My mother stopped dead, eyes glittering like she was going to deck the lot of them.
‘Pathetic creatures. You don’t deserve to even say his name.’
I stared at her in open-mouthed admiration, scampering after her as she marched off.
At home, she locked herself in her room with a bottle of gin. She didn’t emerge for the next three days. When I knocked, she didn’t answer. The sound of her crying the only way I knew she was still alive.
I wished I could I cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Instead, they built up inside me, a dam waiting to burst. A boulder on my back, rocks in my throat. And all the while, the same black thoughts circling in my head.
What if Matty wasn’t the killer? What if the real culprit was still out there? What would that make me?
What if women were still in danger? What if more died because of what I’d done?
And if he was guilty? What did that make me then? If I’d been less of an ostrich, if I’d looked beyond what I wanted to see, how many women would still be alive? How many families still intact?
If he was innocent, I was guilty.
If he was guilty, I was too.
Matty may or may not have been a murderer, but whichever way I sliced it, there was blood on my hands.
Lives had ended because of me.
