CAN I TRUST YOU? – Rob Gittins
Where do the ideas come from? It’s a question we’ve all been asked. There are a million answers, probably more, but, for me, it usually starts with a ‘what if?’ moment. What if this happened to my character instead of that? What if my character chose that road and not this?
Occasionally, very occasionally, a story comes straight out of a real life ‘what if?’ moment. This is mine.
A few years ago, I was on a train going home. There were just myself and a girl in her late teens in the carriage. We started talking. She told me she was on holiday, staying with friends in a village not far from my own. I gave her some tips on local sights.
At the station I went to collect my car, but then I heard her on her mobile, checking for taxis. There was a two hour wait, possibly longer. I also heard her checking on buses, but ours is a small rural halt. The last bus leaves the station at 8pm. It was now well gone 9pm and dark.
I hesitated, but then went back. I remember holding up my hands, almost in a surrender gesture as I approached. I was aware even then how dodgy this could look – a middle aged man approaching a young girl in this way. But she was on her own in a strange town with no means of getting where she needed to go. I told her I passed the small village where she was staying and offered her a lift.
Understandably, she hesitated too. But then she agreed. We got in my car, made small talk. But as we approached the village, she told me to drop her at the top of the lane leading down to the houses. I took that at the time as a sensible precaution. She trusted me enough to get into my car, but she really didn’t want a stranger to know exactly where she was staying.
The next morning, I made the reverse journey back to the station to catch another train. As I approached that same lane, I saw scenes of crime tape blocking it off. A uniformed officer stood guard, a police van and two white-suited figures visible behind. I stopped and asked what had happened. I’d later find out other drivers had slowed as they’d passed, but only I’d stopped. The officer told me a young girl had been attacked on that lane late the previous evening and was now in hospital.
In that moment I felt as if it wasn’t just me, but the whole world that was holding its breath. I’d given a lift to a young girl to that very spot that previous evening. Her DNA had to be all over my car. There were no witnesses to my story that I’d simply dropped her off and then gone home. And what was the very first thing I’d done the next morning? I’d returned to the scene of the crime.
That was the starting point of my novel, Can I Trust You? published by Hobeck Books. It’s about a moment when things change forever.
In real life, the girl who’d been attacked was not the girl I dropped off. The girl who’d been attacked turned out to be the victim of a domestic assault and, so far as I know, the girl I met went on to enjoy an otherwise uneventful holiday. But what if she had been that girl?
I was also not taken in and questioned for a crime I did not commit. But what if I had been?
You can read more about Rob Gittins here, and find his website here: http://www.robgittins.com/