“He knew I was wearing my nightie,” Polly had said. “He got that right. How did he know that? How did he know I was wearing my nightie?”

“It was the middle of the night, for heaven’s sake!” her friends replied. “Got to be a pretty good chance you were wearing a nightie, hasn’t there? Even a fool of a pervert could work that one out. He doesn’t know where you live.”

But Polly’s friends had been wrong. The caller did know where Polly lived. He knew a lot about her because he was not a random pervert at all, but a most specific pervert. A stalker. That first call had been the start of a campaign of intimidation that had transformed Polly’s life into a living hell. A hell from which the law had been unable to offer any protection.

“Our hands are tied, Ms Slade. There’s nothing actually illegal about making phonecalls, writing letters or ringing people’s doorbells.”

“Terrific,” said Polly. “So I’ll get back to you when I’ve been raped and murdered, then, shall I?”

The police assured her that it hardly ever came to that.

2

He’d been a client of hers. At the council office where she worked, the office that dealt with equal opportunities and discrimination. His was one of those depressing modern cases where sad white men who have failed to be promoted claim reverse discrimination, saying that they have been passed over for advancement in favour of less well qualified black lesbians. The problem is, of course, that often they are right: they have been passed over in favour of less well qualified black lesbians, that being the whole point of the policy. To positively discriminate in favour of groups that have been negatively discriminated against in the past.

“But now I’m being negatively discriminated against,” the sad white men inevitably reply.

“Specifically, yes,” the officers of the Office of Equal Opportunity (of whom Polly was one) would attempt to explain.