Popping out to buy milk the other night, I saw how women die. My nearest local shop in south-west London, the place I go for last-minute and forgotten groceries, is an M&S at a petrol station. It sells fuel, overpriced food and coffee. It’s open late.
As I queued to pay for my semi-skimmed just before 7 p.m., I noticed a couple of police constables – one male, one female – waiting for coffee. Their marked car was parked outside, though not at a pump; they’d evidently stopped just for the coffee.
Did the time it takes to get a coffee, pick a snack, and pay for it cost a woman a beating?
As we waited, there was an electrical squawk from one of the officers’ radios. A dispatcher read over details of an emergency call with an address in London SW11. One of the words she used stood out: ‘domestic’.
As the message played out, the two PCs tensed, then, on hearing that word, relaxed.
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