“I was eight,” I state in a flat voice. “Nine at the time of the trial.” My throat spasms again, this time so painfully it feels cut open. “Nobody told me about any paperwork.”
The officer’s expression is apologetic but it’s not her fault. There’s nothing she can do. Nothing anyone can do unless they get handy with a time machine.
“What about the no-contact order?” I meet her gaze and hold it, eyes blasting out a message too rude to come from my mouth. “Is that still in force or do I need to fill out a new form in triplicate?”
“It still applies.” She moves her folder and takes out a clipboard. “If it’s okay, I’d like to ask you some questions about your experience.”
I nod, answering each one as fully as I can, feeling the burn of injustice that the man could be released so early in his sentence. It doesn’t seem fair, not when I don’t get a reprieve from my intrusive thoughts, from my hypervigilance.
Finally, we get through the morass of detail to the broader questions. “And you’re saying this man is bothering you again?”
“Him or someone working for him. He’s not meant to have contact with either of us.”
“Has your mother received anything similar?”
“If she has, she hasn’t told me.” I shift in my seat, increasingly uncomfortable. “My mother has late-stage cancer. She doesn’t track things well, and she’s in no fit state to make a police complaint even if she had.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” The officer taps her pen on the card. “Can you tell me more about this delivery? Was it inside something else?”
“The envelope’s in there but it must have been left at my house by someone. There’s no postage or address.”
“Okay.”
“He used to…” My throat is so dry I don’t think I can continue. Another sip of lemonade doesn’t seem to help. “He filmed me. He’s not meant to…”
I turn away from her sympathetic gaze and stare at the blank wall until I have myself back under control.
This is awful.
They won’t do anything. I should never have come.
“I better go,” I say, standing like I dropped in at a neighbour’s house on a whim. “It’s getting late and I…”
My sentence doesn’t resolve itself but that’s okay. I don’t need a reason to leave. It’s a free country and I can just go.
“Anything more you can tell—”
I shake my head, unable to muster the will to continue.
The female officer comes around from behind the desk, escorting me to the door. “I’ll forward the card to our testing centre to swab for DNA and perform a fingerprint comparison. Once we have those back, I’ll contact you. In the meantime, you might find it preferable to stay with some—”
“I already have flatmates. We’ll be careful.”
“Good.” She hands me her card. “If you think of anything new, please call me and if you see the suspect near your home or workplace, call emergency. They’ll have the best response time.”
“Okay.” I pause for a second. “If they come back as his…?”
“He’ll be in breach of your protective order and his parole conditions. I don’t want to get ahead of things, but that would make him eligible for recall to prison.”
“And if that happens, I can fill out the forms?”
She nods. “I’ll refer you to the courts department and they can register you correctly.”
My hands shake as I leave the station and head for the bus stop. The reassurance I felt in the station recedes further with each passing minute until the entire visit seems pointless.
The man who abused me, abused my mother, will probably earn no more than a chat with his probation officer, then he’ll be free to torture me some more.
If it’s even him doing it. You don’t know that. It could be a client with a penchant for glitter.
