AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I rolled my eyes. He was always making out things were more dangerous than they really were. That I’d get attacked riding my bike in the street. Mugged if I walked home in the dark. Cut up into little pieces if I ventured down an alleyway on my own. The world’s not what you think it is, pumpkin. You never know where there’s a predator lurking.
‘It says here that a jogger claimed he’d seen the body but didn’t report it because at the time he thought it was a mannequin,’ my mother said.
Matty snorted.
‘You’re joking.’
She glanced at me. Did he really just say that?
‘You think it’s funny? The poor girl was only seventeen.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s horrible.’
‘Utterly twisted.’
She carried on reading, her lips moving in the way of a silent prayer.
‘Asphyxiated,’ she whispered. ‘Slashed across the buttocks.’
‘Out alone at night,’ Matty said. ‘Why do they keep doing it?’
‘Women should be able to go out at night without getting killed,’ I retorted.
My mother glanced up from the paper, a thin line etched between her eyebrows.
‘Doesn’t say anything here about her being out alone.’
Matty shrugged.
‘They basically all are, aren’t they?’
I shook my head.
‘How do y—’
My mother knocked over her coffee mug, a brown river drowning the paper.
‘Dammit, it’s gone everywhere.’
Matty grabbed the paper towels.
‘Makes you wonder,’ she said as he mopped up.
‘Wonder what?’
‘All this time and he still hasn’t slipped up.’
‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ Matty agreed.
