Witness

by Caroline Mitchell

up. ‘I’ve got to stay with him.’ But his skin was cold. So very cold, and something sticky and damp had soaked into my linen trousers. My boyfriend had bought them for me, on a rare trip to London. You can tell a lot about a woman by the clothes she wears, he had said. I pulled my cardigan closed as his presence infiltrated my brain. But not quick enough to hide the yellowing bruises on my collarbone. I should have worn my polo neck, but I wasn’t expecting visitors . . . My thoughts were interrupted

Rebecca?’ I nodded numbly, my eyes on the casualty on the other side of the room. The CPR that was being administered expelled even more blood. It pooled on the mat and seeped through the cracks in my varnished floorboards. The third paramedic, balding and in his fifties, attached the pads from the defibrillator. A button was pressed, and a mechanical voice repeated the command, stand clear. My television flashed in the background, as a news