For the price of two.......

Your mum had ironed your shirt, polished your boots, and made you a packed lunch.

Two hours later, you finally realised it wasn’t about playing the hero, you looked at her, she was crying, you’d never seen anyone cry so much, but you knew it wasn’t out of pain, but despair. Yes, she was clearly in pain, the blood running from her mouth, nose and head told you that much, you knew she was crying because she was on the edge, she had nothing left to hang onto. You heard the sirens of the ambulance in the distance, you knew the paramedics had most likely seen this kind of thing before, but you were only eighteen years old, you had only ever seen this much blood on television.

If you had any feelings you would have been stood there, righteously angry, cursing to yourself. You knew you could do nothing, nothing you did would make any difference, it wouldn’t do any good, Jonathon had made the arrest, a girl was in the back seat of the patrol car, handcuffed. The other two girls, who were involved, looked harmless, you looked at them and made a judgement, you looked down on them, they were the lowest of the low, your naïve mind was working overtime.

Three witness statements and an interview later, you knew the story, you knew what had happened. A young, innocent girl with learning difficulties, desperate for a friend, had been lured to a location, and had been ambushed. One of the girls jumped on her, attacked her, whilst the other two filmed the attack, on their mobile phones.

All the girls were under the age of fourteen.

‘Join the Special Constabulary, learn to become cynical, jaded, apathetic, unsympathetic and unemotional, lose your soul and live ten years, for the price of two.’

You wonder how many people would join the Special Constabulary, if those words were at the forefront of the recruitment campaign.