My eyes swept idly across the photographs tacked up behind my client’s desk, stopping at one I must have seen a dozen times: a smiling girl free-wheeling on her bicycle. A carefree girl, a glorious girl, a girl with a radiant smile and, perhaps, with the sun in her eyes – for her eyes, I realised for the first time, held no reflection of her smile.
She finished her call, and I asked, surprised by my own urgency
“Who took that one?”
She didn’t turn round. She knew which one, and she watched me steadily as she gave me the name I expected, smiling sadly. No carefree grin, this one, but a smile with no pretence and no illusions.
“You didn’t believe me.”
No anger, no resignation. Only dawning hope.
“I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“And now?”
“We’ll nail him. We’ll nail the bastard.”
Another bleak reaction to an apparently light-hearted VisDare prompt. I should get out more. You should go and have a look at the other responses.
