I See You

by Clare Mackintosh

I see you. But you don’t see me. You’re engrossed in your book; a paperback cover with a girl in a red dress. I can’t see the title but it doesn’t matter; they’re all the same. If it isn’t boy meets girl, it’s boy stalks girl. Boy kills girl. The irony isn’t lost on me.

There are too many books where dead or abused women provide the entertainment, and there are regular calls for writers to move away from such tropes. But here’s the thing: there are too many situations in real life where women are killed or abused. It is a writer’s job to hold a mirror up to society, and if we paper over reality we are doing an injustice to the many, many women who live in fear.